Henrietta Lovell sources teas from small mountain tea gardens, mainly in the famous tea region of Fujian, China. For those interested in finding aficionado teas in London, she provides some basic background.

Tea may come from the same regions and have the same name but not all tea is equal. It’s rather like fine wine or champagne: in a terroir there may be many producers growing many grapes but they don’t, of course, all produce the same wine. Beyond the dedication of the grower and the soil in which it is grown, teas differ by the way they are processed.

White tea is just dried and reveals the most delicate flavours with a heady aroma of freshly mown grass. Green tea is lightly fired or steamed to develop the softer, greener flavours. Black tea goes through fermentation (oxidization) which brings out the richest tannic flavours (the bitter taste that can make the mouth feel dry) ; and it’s not just the flavour that changes with the different methods of processing.

White tea, as the least processed of all teas, retains the highest concentrates of antioxidants, making it more effective at preventing and fighting various diseases. Green tea is steamed or fired to prevent oxidization and still maintains more antioxidants than black. The oxidization of black tea, however, results in some of the beneficial nutrients being converted into other compounds.

Henrietta’s Rare Tea Company has recently launched in Waitrose in London. You can find her products at these Waitrose stores : Holloway Road, East Sheen, Kings Road, John Barnes (Finchley road), Richmond, Bloomsbury, Putney, Gloucester Road, Marylebone, Oxford Street, Canary Wharf, Belgravia, Wandsworth, Kensington, Fulham, Balham, Barbican, St Katherines Dock and West Ealing. You can also order her teas direct from her online store here.

There’s nothing better than sitting down with a good cup of tea and a large slice of chocolate cake (it’s not even 10am and I’m already salavating), but what happens if you combine the two..?

Flavoured teas are not new (think Earl Grey) and chocolate flavoured tea certainly isn’t either - but what constitutes a good chocolate tea? Whilst Adagio claim to have the best chocolate flavoured tea, most large tea companies will offer some form of chocolate flavoured combination. I’ve not tasted Adagio’s blend, of the chocolate teas I know, the best tend to have a light tea base (such as a Sri Lankan Uva) so as not to detract from the delicate flavour of the chocolate. A North Indian Assam base is already very malty and thick, so the chocolate flavouring has to be added to the tea in higher quantities in order to be tasted in the cup. Continue Reading »

Alex Probyn gives some industry insider views on tea in tea bags. Alex is a trained Master Tea Blender whose company Blends for Friends creates personalised tea blends as gifts and custom blends for tea shops; as gifts these teas are perhaps the height of tea giving as each blend is uniquely created from Alex’s stock of over 400 teas and herbs.

Invented in 1904, becoming widespread in Europe and North America during the 1950’s, the tea bag had not seen much change in it’s style for nearly 40 years before the likes of Tetley and Unilever (Lipton and PG Tips) sought new marketing angles by changing it’s shape. In reality - and contrary to what they would want you to believe - whether it be square, round or triangular, the flavour extraction is pretty much the same. However the past 10 years have seen a mini-revolution in these bags of leaves and it seems the bag of the moment is a ‘Fuso’ style bag that allows loose leaf teas to be brewed in a see-through gauze tea bag. Continue Reading »