I’ve just come back from a wonderful trip to South Korea which I will tell you all about in a week or so, but first I must catch up with myself and log my recent visit to New York with IQ Innovations who in September launched their impressive tea brewing machine, ‘Fine T’.

I’ve been working with IQ Innovations since February and have been at various house ware shows and trade fairs in the UK and the US since then to explain the machine and encourage people to think of buying one or stocking it in their stores. This recent trip was arranged so that I could demonstrate the machine for staff and customers in the best of New York’s cook ware stores - such as Chef Central, The Broadway Panhandler and Zabars - and be at an ‘Afternoon Tea” event at Fortunoffs in New York with Lord Wedgwood of the Wedgwood pottery company. I had never met Lord Wedgwood before and it was really interesting to hear him speak about the history of the company and the products they have been making since 1759 when his ancestor Thomas Wedgwood founded the company in Burslem, Staffordshire.

Like other important potteries at that time, Wedgwood met the growing demand for teapots from the wealthy upper classes, and when French traveller and writer Francois de la Rochefoucauld visited England, he noted how important it was then for English families to own expensively prestigious tea wares. In his 1784 book, A Frenchman in England, he wrote, “Throughout the whole of England the drinking of tea is general … It provides the rich with an opportunity to display their magnificence in the matter of tea-pots, cups, and so on, which are always of most elegant design based upon Etruscan and other models of antiquity.” Not surprising then that Josiah Wedgwood, Thomas’s son, built a new factory in 1769 and called it Etruria. Interesting too (but perhaps not so surprising since tea people have always tended to be philanthropic and fair-minded) that Josiah was a social reformer and a founding member of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

The selection of well-designed teapots and other brewing equipage available today is growing and I was impressed by the range of tea brewing equipment on offer in the stores I visited in Manhattan. And as I chatted to people at the venues I visited in and around New York, it was really interesting to discover how many Americans drink a wide variety of loose leaf teas and really appreciate the different flavours and aromas of different world teas. But the one thing that I found (and I come across this everywhere) is the fact that very few people realise that green teas and white teas and some oolong teas need to be brewed in much cooler water than black and puerh teas.

And that’s why the Fine T machine is so great for anyone who loves all the different types of speciality tea but doesn’t really know the best temperatures and timings for perfect brewing. The machine is programmed with optional settings wit different temperatures and different brewing times for different categories of tea and different sized leaf so whatever tea you like to drink, there’s a suitable setting for you to choose. I love my machine - it sits chummily on my work top in my kitchen waiting to brew me constant cups of tea through the day and the feature I love best is that it has a digital clock and timing device which allows you to prompt it into action just before you get up each morning! So instead of stumbling around the kitchen trying to fill the kettle, find the teapot, open the tea caddy, and get things going while still half asleep, the machine takes care of everything (if you would like to know more, go to www.fine-t.co.uk/home). All you have to do is pour in the water, measure in the loose leaf tea and choose your programme. It really does brew perfect tea every time!

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