Expanding the Topic. Critical Thinking

Exercise your journalistic skills: read the following article from The Daily Express, define its message and formulate the main idea of each passage writing out key expressions. What style does the journalist employ? Is it effective in reflecting the theme of the article? Look up the marked words in the dictionary and memorize their meaning.

The Cup That Cheers

At the moment it reaches 212 degrees Fahrenheit, Sam Twining takes the kettle he had filled with fresh, cold water off the boil and pours it carefully over the tea leaves. “In the morning”, he was telling me, “I will start with bright and brisk English breakfast tea. After lunch, I will have a cup of Darjeeling – a mellow, rounded drink. If the afternoon is especially hot, I will have a cup of Lapsang Souchong which has a smoky taste from being smoked over oak chips. If the afternoon is warm, I will have a cup of Earl Grey”, the bergamot-flavoured tea first blended for the Earl by Sam Twinning’s forebear – some 150 years ago. “If it is cold and miserable I’ll probably have a cup of Assam which is rich and malty. And, if the weather is really awful, I’ll have a cup of Vintage Darjeeling, which has a muscatel flavour. ”

And so Twinning’s day progresses, a cup of tea never far from the hand of a man whose family have been teamen ever since they went into the business “as a gimmick” nine generations ago in 1706.

Another cup of low-caffeine Earl Grey at night. A cup of rose Pouchong, which is sprinkled with real rose petals, if he happens to be at home in the evening. Fine black Russian Caravan, so named after the caravan route that first bore it out of China – after red wine. Oolong – to tea what rose is to wine – after white. “ As a complement, to enhance the flavours, ” he explained.

The comparison with wine is a reasonable one. Having found a way 5, 000 years ago of making water more palatable by infusing it with leaves of the thea sinensis plant, the Chinese went on to discover that tea, like the grape, draws its taste and character from the soil in which it grows. And for all those intervening years, men have been transporting it, growing it and blending it in search of the perfect cup for the occasion.

Notes

The title “The cup that cheers” is a saying that is commonly used to refer to tea (a drink that makes you feel cheerful). It’s a quotation from the poem The Task by the English poet William Cowper (1731-1800):

Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast,

Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round,

And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn

Throws up a steamy column, and the cups

That cheer but not inebriate, wait on each,

So let us welcome peaceful ev’ning in.

What do you think influences a country’s food? Read this magazine article about English food and define the kind of person who wrote it. Who do you think Jane Grigson is? What makes you think so? Do you agree with this article?