Brew & Being: Tea Flight

​Three Chinese black teas. One gaiwan. Nine small cups, and every step changes exactly one thing.

​You'll meet the first tea the way this country meets tea: in a mug, forgotten for five minutes. Ten minutes later the same leaf comes out of a gaiwan. That gap is where the afternoon starts.

​Then an old-tree black from Yunnan, same numbers. Then a third we haven't managed to name yet, and the gaiwan comes round to you.

​You mark each tea on a map on your phone. By the end there's a line across it, and everyone's line looks different.

​What you'll leave with

​An envelope of the tea you'd go back to, with the numbers written on the front. Brew it on Monday. It'll taste like Sunday.

​Good to know

​No experience needed, and no milk, sorry. Four seats, one table, one gaiwan. Bring your phone; it comes out for thirty seconds after each tea, then goes face down. Something small and plant-based arrives with the last pour.

​Brew & Being: Tea Flight is a series. Each edition takes one question and three leaves. Coffee Flight runs alongside it, same shape, different plant.