The Land of Plenty

Once more hurling ourselves into the unknown in search of tea, it’s time for Tesco/Lotus a supermarket joint venture between Tesco of the UK and Lotus of Thailand.

It’s large! The only other Tesco I’ve been is in in Pitsea, Essex and this would give that one a run for its money.

Now, the whole Tesco empire – which now sells a third of all groceries in the UK – was born of tea. Jack Cohen bought a surplus consignment of tea from a man called T.E. Stockwell – the TES in Tesco.

So, they should have tea.

And they certainly had everything else. Pausing to honour the memory of a departed and dear relative of Lady Devotea by buying Tesco Jam Doughnuts – that’s obviously another story there – I rampaged through the store, a sublime mixture of the familiar and the exotic. There’s the apples; there’s the rambutan. There’s the tea biscuits, there’s the Pocky. There’s the cheese and onion crisps, there’s the pork and prawn flavour. There’s a ceremonial tiffin tin stack to serve food to the Buddha, there’s the – hang on, back up, I’ll have that tiffin.

TEA! Glorious tea! Two whole racks.

Ok, Lipton, Twinnings, you’ve done your jobs, with a sterling effort from Dilmah as well.  Eight out of the twelve shelves are bagged teas. Then there’s powdered black tea, which is pretty common here, and iced tea powders.

That leaves two whole shelves of boxes of tea!

OK, this side is maybe green and this side maybe black. Green side first.

I recognise one I’ve bought and hated – the red box of a previous article. And this one says “oolong of China” – it’s the only words in English, but no oolong for me today. And by all that’s unholy, there’s some genmeicha. I want black. Other shelf, I think.

I went through every box and selected three teas.

No 1 Chinese tea. That looks black on the cover.

Three Horses Number 1. And Three Horses Number 3.

(I’ll add picture in a future pictorial blog, it’s a little hard to make it work from here.

None of them have much information in English. The fact that the two boxes from Three Horses are red and green, and the other fact that in China they call black tea “red tea” makes me think they might be one of each.

So, let’s skip the rest of that day’s adventures.  Some of that will surface when I write about cold teas. Six hours later, back at the hotel room.

The Number one Chinese Tea is an oolong. If you read my last blog, you’ll know that one got packed back up for The Buddha.

So, I then steeped Number 1 and Number 3 from Three Horses.

They both seemed to be a bizarre mix of black and green. One greener. Both dreadful! What is this stuff?

Their site offers a picture of three horses, and a “Thai” or “English” option; neither of which works. Not much help, so I tracked down an email address and wrote to them.

I think you’ll enjoy the prompt reply:

Dear sir

The difference between no.1 & no.3  is the quality of the tea.  They both  comprise of thai native teas and teas from mainland china.  The no.1 has more mixture of Chinese teas than the no.3 thus makes it more flavorable and more expensive than the no.3. Hope my answer helps solve some of your questions.

Best regards,

Itsaret Unhathepharak

Marketing manager
Sent from my iPhone

I was fascinated by this answer. It says a lot about tea here.

I wonder what boxes of tea are awaiting me in the near future. I’m still yet to serve Lady Devotea a decent, non-teabag cup of black. Meanwhile, I’m loving the Raming; and I think I’ll buy some to take home.

To be continued. Obviously.