Start with a high quality black tea or black tea blend. We of course recommend Indonique's Irish Breakfast blend of Indian black teas, especially blended for flavor and strength. You can also use our maltier Assam Breakfast or slightly more mellow English Breakfast blends. Rinse the teapot with freshly boiled water to warm the pot. Add one heaping teaspoon of tealeaf for each cup desired to the teapot. Immediately add freshly boiled water. The water should be as hot as possible. That's why we warmed the pot. Use water just as it comes to a boil. Over boiling will remove oxygen and fail to steep properly. Let steep for 3 - 5 minutes. Milk should be warmed to near boiling and added to cups with sugar first. Then pour tea into the cup. For best results, have in simple cups, poured from simple teapots with extraordinary friends.

The tea tax imposed on American colonies was also levied at a much higher rate throughout the British Empire. Whereas the levy in America had the effect of producing a coffee drinking nation, in Ireland, so close to several tea exporting nations, it had the opposite effect. Large and very small operations could easily and very profitably smuggle tea in and out of Ireland. At smuggler's prices it was within reach of countless numbers of Irishmen, a simple luxury in an impoverished land. Each cup provided a welcomed retreat from the harsh realities of their daily lives and a daily snub at the English occupiers.

By the turn of the 20th century, Ireland was a land of shameless hardened habitual tea drinkers, more than any other nation on earth. Most of the tea, unfortunately was imported from England or via English ships. So that, during WWII, when Ireland declared itself neutral, England punished her by dramatically reducing her tea rations. Tea rations were set throughout the Empire based on pre-war consumption. Ireland's ration was far below the standard. Ireland, without a standing navy or merchant marine force to speak of, was tealess throughout the war's duration.

At war's end this situation was immediately addressed with laws requiring all tea imported into Ireland to be directly imported from producing nations and not England. An Irish Tea Company soon after was established as a monopoly to secure direct importation and distribution of the precious national drink, co-owned by over 50 individual tea importers and maintained until Ireland's 1973 entrance into the European Union.

I wonder if they'd like Chai there?

Thanks to Christophe Meneboeuf for the Image above through Wikipedia