Christmas is now a distant memory but now that the weather has

finally turned frosty cold what could be better than some delicious

extra fruity mulled wine? Over Christmas we made our mulled wine

with some Bellevue Winter Fruit Infusion and the berries and spices

in the mix gave the mulled wine extra depth and flavour.

This is a real winter warmer.

Mulled Wine

1 tablespoon Bellevue Winter Fruit infusion (Buy Now)

½ pint red wine

¼ pint water

1 teaspoon sugar – more or less may be added depending on how sweet you

like your mulled wine

½ orange, thickly sliced

Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and heat up slowly. Leave to infuse over

a gentle heat for 15 -20 minutes.

This can be made as sweet

Pour through a strainer to serve and enjoy!

What's the secret ingedient in your mulled wine recipe?

Nearly all of us start a new year with a resolution to do something differently, whether it be to eat 5 fruit & veg a day, to take more exercise or even to keep the filing up to date but what about making a resolution to drink more tea?

Here are our top 10 reasons to drink more tea in the new year.

- Tea is 100% natural.

- Drinking tea can be part of our daily fluid intake

- Tea is calorie free when drunk without milk & sugar

- Tea has always been drunk to lift the spirits in a crisis - it will help you cast off winter blues

- You can treat yourself without it costing too much – indulge in a rare tea –our Nilgiri white is naturally sweet and so good for you too

- Like fruit & veg, tea is rich in antioxidants

- Tea is alcohol free, obviously – enjoy a cup with friends.

- Tea is a natural source of fluoride that can help protect against tooth decay and gum disease.

- The caffeine in tea will revive you and help you complete that wearisome to do list for 2012.

- There are hundreds of different types of tea out there to try – so it’s easy to drink more - just start tasting!

Read part 1 here

The day starts early on tea estates and with another day of driving ahead visiting tea estates we

need to get going. It is an hour on unmade up road to get to the smooth tarmacked highway which

is the main route to Zambia. Then we zoom along through land which is parched dry. Suddenly

through the trees there is a splash of the brightest Technicolor yellowy green. This is clonal tea

which came about 25 years or so ago when nursery men trying to find the best traditional seedlings

to plant realised that the process could be speeded up and improved by taking cuttings from the

most productive and best quality bushes – this clonal tea process has transformed the business of

tea growing in Africa.

We turn off the road and drive through the flattest field of tea I have ever seen. The rains have

not arrived yet so in order to maintain some level of production irrigation is being used. This is tea

production at its most efficient – flat land, new clonal planting, water and machines in the distance

plucking. The men and women operating the plucking machines like working in this way. They earn

more money and it is much less back-breaking work.

This is the future of tea for most of the world’s tea production. It might seem less romantic than

tea pluckers on misty hillsides but even if this is what people call agribusiness the same passion for

producing excellent quality tea still exists on this estate which in addition is certified Fairtrade.

The quest for quality is obvious in the tea factory where the CTC production is a complicated and

finely tuned process. The price the tea will fetch depends on the expertise with which it is produced.

There is a great attention to detail and once the leaf is fired and more recognisably tea it is picked

up to smell and test its feel. The smell is overwhelmingly sweet and pungent. After viewing the

factory, teas are tasted with typically noisy slurpings and spittings. Discussions follow about the tea’s

manufacture, its quality and potential markets.

Then it is on to the next factory 2 hours away which is owned by the same people – here they make

traditional black tea as well as speciality varieties and herbal infusions. The fields look more like a

traditional estate with rolling hills and it is certified Organic and Fairtrade. Even here they are talking

about low level mechanisation with the pluckers using shears with a plastic container to catch the

tea as it is cut. We taste some tea but there is not much activity in the factory because the rains

haven’t come yet. We go out into the fields to see how the herbal infusions, camomile and mint are

grown.

The day ends with a 3 to 4 hour drive back. This gives me time to reflect that these two estates

perfectly illustrate something which the tea bag bashers tend to ignore; which is that the absolute

attention to detail, the knowledge and enthusiasm as well as the desire to make the best product

possible can be found just as easily on an estate producing CTC grades for the tea bag market as on

an estate manufacturing speciality tea.

Masala chai is perfect on a cold grey day when the daylight hours are in short supply.

Chai is the word for tea in much of South Asia. Masala Chai is chai/tea brewed with spices. I

remember drinking a very gingery sweet tea after my first overnight train journey in India during

their winter, and very delicious and welcome it was too. The exact recipes for masala chai vary

by region and can be made with various different spices, though this recipe combines some of

the most popular into one delicious hot drink...

Ingredients:

250 ml water

125 ml milk

2-3 tsp black tea leaves (Kenya CTC, Assam, Bellevue Belter)

1 cardamom pod, crushed

1 Clove

1/2 inch piece of root ginger, grated

1/4 inch piece of Cinnamon stick

Sugar to taste

Put water, milk and spices in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

When it begins to boil, add the tea leaves and keep on a rolling boil for 2 minutes or till the tea

leaves are brewed and the tea has a dark golden colour. Add sugar to taste. Strain the tea into a

mug.

The beauty of this recipe is that the quantities of spices and tea in this recipe are only guidelines

– it could have more ginger and no cinnamon. I think it needs sweetening but maybe you

don’t.......

How do you like your masala chai?