Step into TeaSmith in Spitalfields, East London, and at first glance it's your textbook embodiment of all we'd expect from a temple to the oriental art of tea drinking. Cool, clean, open space? Tick. Ebony shelving sparsely stocked with beautifully packaged leaves? Tick. Silk drapes and teapots displayed as art? Yep, that as well. They've even got bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling “to reflect Japan's postwar utilitarian aesthetic”.

But what's this? Instead of the plink-plonk of a samisen playing on a perpetual loop, isn't that the Cure belting out their greatest hits? And isn't the venerable tea-master a bit, well, European looking? Scottish, as it turns out. John Kennedy spent two years training with his own teamaster in Hong Kong and he can do all that Yin and Yang and every-tea-journey-begins-with-a-single-leaf stuff, but he remains a Calvinist at heart. “I don't believe in ceremony for ceremony's sake,” he says. “And you certainly don't have to get into a Zen state to appreciate it. Those more ‘philosophical' aspects can end up being a barrier to people's enjoyment.”

What he does take very seriously, of course, is the art of making the perfect cuppa. Kettle on, bag in, it ain't. Let's start with the water, the temperature of which should vary for different teas: 55C for Japanese green teas, 90-plus for oolongs. Then there is the way you pour it. “The idea is to use the shape of the pot to get the water circulating. That way you avoid temperature gradients, which could mean your tea infusing at a hotter temperature at the top and cooler at the bottom.” In practice, this involves sloshing an awful lot of water around the rim and down the outside of your pot. Does it really make all the difference? “I could certainly taste the difference in the finer oolongs. You'll also get a different texture of tea between a porcelain pot and a Chinese clay one, which is porous and allows the tea to breathe.”

Such nuances depend, of course, on using the right tea. Kennedy's come mainly from single estates and are differentiated by cultivar of tea plant rather than through blends or added flavours. His hand-fired Long Jin Chinese Green tea has a revelatory nuttiness and none of the bitter vegetal notes of lesser teas. A floral Teguanyin Supreme oolong is extraordinarily silky and sweet, and feels like it is building up to a tannic bite which never comes. “People are always amazed by the intensity of flavour you get, but without any of the sharpness,” he explains. “That's down to the quality of tea. Damaged leaves will release the bitterness found in the middle of the leaf, but these don't.”

Next, he brews a more fruity style of oolong called Phoenix Supreme, which comes from plants descended from the 500-year-old tea bush reserved for Chairman Mao. “This has an intensity of flavour way in excess of other more generic plants,” says Kennedy. “This quality would only have been for the elite in China before they took cuttings and made it more commercially available.” It smells of berry fruits in the pot, but of bananas and apricots on the palate, and has a wonderful lingering aftertaste.

I think I've said before that I like my tea mainly to taste of coffee, and of the one billion cups we Brits drink every week, I contribute maybe one. But I have to say, Kennedy has won me round. Until, that is, he produces his Extra Old Tippy Puer, “double fermented and aged for 15 years”. Euurgh. It's like sucking on a camel's armpit. “Funny that,” says Kennedy. “That's probably the taste they are after – replicating the flavour that evolved from months being transported on camelback along the Silk Route.”

TeaSmith, 6 Lamb Street, E1 (020-7247 1333)

Explore Food & Drink

• Gordon Ramsay

• Heston Blumenthal

• Recipes

• Wine

• Real Food

• Anjum Anand

• Eating Out

• Video Recipes

Times Recommends

• How to season a wok
• Chicago Rib Shack hits back at its critics
• Gordon Ramsay: Indian barbecue