GREAT LOST TEAS PARTS ONE & TWO
I Wharfmans' Tea
At the commercial height of the tea trade, there wasn't a clipper in the British fleet that didn't have a permanent carpet of sodden tea-leaves lining the bottom of its cargo hold. These loose leaves were the result of spillage when loading or unloading, and if you picked through the waterlogged morass and studied it with a trained eye, you would know exactly where the ship had sailed.
When there was excessive water in the hold, a strange hybrid tea sloshed around between the timbers. On some ships, it was brought up on decks in buckets where it was either slightly heated or, in warmer climes, left out in the sun until tepid. It was often drunk seasoned with a pinch of salt.
When those big ships docked in England, it was common for the weakened or damaged timbers to be replaced. The old timbers from the hold, which had absorbed large quantities of tea during their lives, were roughly snapped into small pieces by the dock workers and put into hessian sacks with four or five generous handfuls of wet tea taken from the hold of the same ship. The sack was sewn up and the sealed ends made water-tight with a coating of tar. On cold nights, these sacks, stewed in big kettles up and down the wharves; the resulting tea kept the dockers, sailors and night-watchmen both warm and sober and had them picking small splinters of wood, nicknamed 'fishbones' out of their lips and the roofs of their mouths.
A few years ago, I visited Perc Warman at his home in Greenwich. He owned a small sack of Wharfmans' tea originating from 'The Green Lion' - a tea clipper that sailed in the early 19th century.
Incidentally, after its retirement, 'The Green Lion' was purchased by one of its former crewmen, now a wealthy sea captain. Popular folklore has it that when he failed to pay the full amount for the ship, about a quarter of the front section was removed and sold as firewood, leaving him with the remainder. You can still see part of 'The Green Lion' at 'The Sacker's Inn' on Narrow Street, in Limehouse, London. Enter the Inn through the side entrance on Flocks Alley. Looking up at the ceiling, you can clearly see the join, where the after-castle of the ship was grafted onto the rear of the building. It is now a games room, with a full-size snooker table.
Perc and I attempted to cook-up the tea on his grease-splattered gas hob, stuffing the sacking as best we could into a small stainless steel saucepan. Unfortunately, the bag and its contents absorbed most of the water and began to smoulder, filling the kitchen with smoke.
Later, over a cup of PG Tips, Perc told me about 'The Cherrytown', whose timbers made the best Wharfmans' Tea:
""It was broken up in South Africa,"" He huffed. ""They didn't know its value. There was one bag that did the rounds on Liverpool docks. It had a big black tar mark down one side where it split open and then they mended it.""
Perc learned all about Wharfmans' Tea from his Grandfather, whose own father had worked on the London Docks:
""It was like wine, but no-one ever had a proper go at making it. It was all left down to chance - whether it was a good brew. You had to get the right combination of teas mixing together in the hold, in the right order, on top of each other. There's a firm base layer, with fresh leaves lying loose on top of it, pressing it down and then there's other things, like the type of seawater that gets into the hold and the fresh water when you come into port and how long the timbers have been soaking.""
Sacks of Wharfmans' Tea still occasionally appear at auction. They usually sell for between eight hundred and one thousand pounds. In Hong Kong, one bag was recently put up for sale in an art gallery.
Perc Warman died peacefully in June of last year.
II Lofthouse Tea
A German blend made from dried orange blossom, which is stored in lofts over the Summer and then combined with a very small amount of tea-leaf in the late Autumn.
When it was first introduced to England, The Grocer's Company, of London, classified it as a 'herbal potion' and as a result, it was never widely distributed.
Even today, an archaic piece of trade legislation means that food-stores and supermarkets risk prosecution under dated Witchcraft and Treason laws, should they decide to stock it.
There are two distinct flavours of Lofthouse Tea: The popular 'airy' version, where the orange blossom is kept in ventilated attics and exposed to sunlight through open windows, and a less well-known 'musty' blend, which is intentionally stored in a stuffy airless environment. The latter has a rounder, more full-bodied flavour, although some drinkers complain that the taste is too reminiscent of rotten oranges.
stein"
