Woman Tea-taster

Shannon News, 31 December 1929, Page 1

Woman Tea-taster

In. an office in Rood la.no, Fenehurch street, E.C., I found the first woma.ii tea-taster—Miss Violet Wilson Maitland, (writes a correspondent in the Daily Mail). She is a shrewd Scottish woman wit): a kindly eye, and she adopted tea-tast-ing as a profession 16 years ago.

Miss Maitland revealed to me some of the secrets of her trade. It was Ceylon day, when hundreds of different samples had to be brewed, tasted, and valued. With a delicate copper scale •he weighed out some tea equivalent to /he" weoght o>f a sixpence, and placed it in small china tasting pots. When a kettle of water was just boiling she poured a. little water on the tea, anl, setting a six-minute alarm clock, she waited for the tea to brew.

"Do you never get tired of tea-tast-ing?" I asked. Miss Maitland replied:

"If I had to choose my career over again I would still bo a t&a-taster. It is intensely interesting. Every day there is something new to learn about tea. Scents should never be brought near the sample to'be tasted. For that reason one cannot use paint and powder when at work. I find that eating an applo revives the palate after a long day at tasting two or three hundred different teas."

Just then the alarm bell rang to tell us that the tea was ready.

"The sample must infuse for six min utes and no longer," said Miss Mait land.

Taking one of the pots she poured out the liquid, leaving the leaves on the upturned lid. A good tea, she said, can be judged from the colour of the infused leaves; they should be a ruddy shade, almost the colour of a new penny.

Special tests arc made with samples of water from different parts of the country. Gallon jars arrive from Scotland, the Midlands, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and the water is boiled and tried with various kinds of tea until

the ideal blend for the district is found.