Felicity Cloake’s article about tea (No salt please, we’re British: how to make the perfect cup of tea, 26 January) reminded me that when I was young my mother wouldn’t let me pour tea for her as she claimed I held the teapot too high above the cup, thereby allowing the tea to get cold on the way down.
David Gent
Dartmouth, Devon
• Two events stand out in my own personal tea education. The first was as a teenager in the 1960s working on an archaeological dig in Warwickshire, where our tea hut was run by two rather lovely elderly ladies. Having asked for two sugars, I was politely but firmly admonished by them both and have enjoyed unsweetened tea ever since. The second was a more recent trip to Darjeeling, which taught me that, with its unique balance of delicacy and flavour, there is no finer tea.
Mike Battye
Oxton, Merseyside
• I was pleased to read the helpful guide by Felicity Cloake on how a decent cup of tea should be prepared. However, I notice once again the improper use of the word “brew” when adding boiling water to the tea leaves. As a person brought up in Burton-on-Trent should know, “brewing” refers to the process of fermentation. The word for adding hot water to malt is “mashing”. I grew up knowing that you allowed the tea in the pot to “mash”, not “brew”.
Rev Ray Owen
Mayfield, Staffordshire
• I’ve never tried it with salt (‘Outrageous’ tea recipe involving pinch of salt draws US embassy comment, 24 January), but in 1991, exhausted and still jetlagged after a long night in a New Orleans jazz bar, I was asked by the young bartender if there was anything she could get me. “What I’d really like is a cup of tea,” I replied, “but you can’t do that, can you?” She could, and she did, and it remains the foulest concoction I’ve ever tasted. It turned out she had simply poured iced tea into a cup – and microwaved it.
Allan Wilcox
Nant Peris, Gwynedd
• The American chemist who suggests adding salt to tea might just be on the right track: 45 years ago, while working in a Cypriot taverna, I learned to add a little salt to Greek coffee as I was brewing it. It’s not about the taste of the salt, which simply makes the water boil at a higher temperature – that’s what gives the coffee a better flavour.
Charles Osborne
Prague, Czech Republic
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