“Tea for two” from No no Nanette, that infuriating aural worm you can’t get out of your head, is 90 years old this year. And they’re not joking. When it comes to tea, things happen in twos. Like our tasting of six (2 x 3) varietals of Dilmah tea (named after the two sons Dilhan and Malik of founder Merrill J. Fernando with a first name with two r’s and two l’s) yesterday afternoon at Dash Restaurant. We were paired up and shared a pot between two. All that was missing was Greg Landman from Country Life to ask “what goes in dry, comes out wet and gives pleasure to two people?” A tea bag.

The tasting was led by Gero Olbeter and took place at the Queen Victoria at the Waterfront, an hotel named after perhaps the most tea-friendly monarch in history. I was pleased to see the table legs were covered to preserve modesty and the high tea served afterwards (below) was suitably extravagant and pleasingly piquant.

My favourite was the Nuwara Eliya Pekoe and not only as we share initials. It hails from Little England, up in the highlands of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as we prefer to call it, and the flavours are complex and bracingly tannic. The Lapsang Souchong, flavoured with pine smoke, was too smokey for me. This is the tea world’s equivalent of Islay single malt.

Dilmah has only been around for two decades, but it feels like forever as the packaging and offering is just so elegant. Dare I say even more elegant than those Fauchon tea bags in the Business Class lounges of Air France that everyone nicks as presents from Paris for friends?