I have some sympathy with Craig Wright’s view (Letters, 19 August) that too many coffee houses make lousy tea. On the hippy trail to India in the early 1970s I tasted locally grown and picked tea, freshly prepared by the roadside beneath the foothills of the Himalayas. A man with a dazzling smile added tea, milk and sugar to a simmering water pot, let it bubble and then sieved the boiling liquid into a cup. It was as “decent” a cuppa I’d tasted before and since. Tea fanatics need to be cautious in asserting that England knows best. If we’re not vigilant they could even start claiming it’s made in Yorkshire.
Dave Wilcox
Tintwistle, Derbyshire
• Mr Wright might like to visit the Salon du Thé in Rennes, Brittany, for a really good cup of tea. The tea is served in a teapot, and the tray also carries an egg timer. You are not allowed to pour the tea until the sand has run out. We ordered three different kinds of tea – English Breakfast, Darjeeling and Russian – and received three different sizes of egg timer.
Karey Hunter
Leicester
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