Hitchens on Tea

Christopher Hitchens has gone quiet over the past few days, which is nothing if not ominous, but he has left an article on Slate about the significance of tea-making etiquette, a topic very dear to my heart. He writes that we must “heed the advice of George Orwell” and that he would “simply hate to think of the harm that might result” from pouring the water before adding the tea. As he accurately points out, tea is a herb and, therefore, activated by the precise and careful introduction of boiling water, that is, water at boiling point, and nothing less. Indeed, because of my ongoing wish to put forward the best possible impression for my future-in-laws, I have often had to stifle the eruption that seems to spill unbidden from my vocal chords when, not only do they add the tea bag last, but they add the milk first. Uncannily, Hitchens hits upon this brilliantly:

If you use milk, use the least creamy type or the tea will acquire a sickly taste. And do not put the milk in the cup first—family feuds have lasted generations over this—because you will almost certainly put in too much. Add it later, and be very careful when you pour.

Milk is a frequently overlooked ingredient of the perfect cup of tea, and adding quite a lot will not be the surest way of attracting my wrath. However, what is inexcusable is pouring it first, not because you may pour too much or too little, but because it falsely activates the tea and depletes the temperature of the incoming water, which, as I have pointed out, is all important. Why this corrupting and foreign practice ever caught on I have no idea. Idleness appears to be the only explanation. As ever, Hitchens is writing to an audience he loves, about a subject he loves, with reference to a writer he loves, and yet remains as impassioned, compelling, entertaining, and vehement as his attacks on Islamic fascism or any other of the world’s more abhorrent elements. That’s why we love him.