I like my tea and have written about tea many times on my blog. While I do not consider myself by any means an expert or connoisseur on the subject, I do have preferences and certain opinions about tea. A few of these are the following.

Tea should be of good quality and carefully chosen, according to your preferences. This is all the more important if, like me, you take your tea without milk or any other additives. Loose leaf tea should be used, not tea bags. If you like a blended tea, as I do, then don’t buy it blended (as with tea bags there’s no knowing what rubbish may be put into ready blended tea), buy the ingredients and mix them yourself. Use clean water at the correct temperature (100°C/212°F or just below that). Though water in the UK is generally wholesome, when coming straight from the tap it may contain substances inimical to good tea and using water filtered by, for example, a Brita filter jug, improves the result. Finally, choose your teapot very carefully!

Teapot design is a whole subject on its own, but I will be brief. Tea needs room to move in the pot in order to brew properly. This means using a tea pot with a large infuser or no infuser at all. An infuser is useful, because without one you will need to pour out the tea through a strainer. Some teapots have a built-in strainer rather than an infuser. That’s quite a good design too but I had one that caused the tea to dribble and miss the cup! I have avoided them since.

For quite some time now, I have used a Forlife Stump Teapot. This is quite a good pot and I don’t have any grounds for criticism of it. However, I did have ideas in mind of a still better design and would periodically surf the Web to see whether such a paragon of teapots actually existed. This received an impetus when Tigger acquired a glass teapot (yes, we have different tastes in tea as in some other things!) and I admired it and wished to have something similar.

After many fruitless searches – looking for a glass teapot with a well designed infuser or strainer and of the right size – I suddenly struck gold. Here is what I found.

Hario Chacha Kyusu Maru Teapot

What appealed to me were the following features. The teapot is glass and I wanted a glass teapot! The infuser is wire mesh, the best sort, except perhaps for nylon infusers. The pot has a wide opening which makes it easy to clean (there’s no hard-to-clean spout) and to access the infuser. The jug design means that it pours cleanly without drips and dribbles.

There is just one small disadvantage: because of its round shape, you have to tip it right up to empty it into your cup and so you have to hold the lid on to stop it falling off. However, because round is the best shape for a teapot – a globe is the solid figure with the smallest surface area, meaning that round pots retain the heat better than other shapes – I am willing to put up with holding onto the lid.

The tea I use is a blend of three kinds: two parts Formosa Oolong, one part Keemun and one part Lapsang Souchong. The latter adds a – to me, agreeable – touch of smokey flavour to the tea. I currently order my tea online from a company I have dealt with for a long time: The Howdah Tea & Coffee Company. They respond very quickly and the tea often reaches me the next day after I place the order.

Finally, I may as well complete the story by saying that I like to pour all my tea into the cup or mug at one go, so the choice of cup is critical. My favourite is this one:

Le Creuset 350ml mug

It is a stoneware coffee mug made by Le Creuset and holds 350ml. The capacity of my new teapot is 300ml, which fits into the cup nicely with a little extra room to avoid spillage.

Le Creuset make a range of kitchen and dining ware that have proved popular in the UK. Perhaps you have some yourself or intend buying some. If so beware: because of dratted Brexit, Le Creuset products are becoming difficult to source and UK retailers are running out of stocks – buy while you still can!