About Our Teas
About Our Teas
How do we ensure a great cuppa every time? It’s simple. We make it ourselves. Using only the best leaves from selected plantations, we hand-blend our own unique range of five Scottish speciality teas – Scottish Breakfast, Highland Blend, Heather, Thistle and Whisky (yes, Whisky).
Available as teabags or as loose tea, simply click on the boxes to find out more.
+ Sourcing our Teas
There are two main ways that we buy our teas – from smallholder co-operatives and gardens.
Most commonly, tea is sold at auctions where the growers get a price based on the taste and appearance as well as supply and demand. The best teas reach the highest prices, and growers are rewarded for quality.
Throughout the year our tea blender, John, works with intermediaries and selects samples of teas sold at auction that are good enough to be used in our blends.
We also buy some of our teas directly. Samples of freshly produced teas are sent to John, where, after tasting samples, we select the ones we like and agree a price directly with the growers.
When we are buying teas, we only buy main grade teas. These are teas that are full of flavour, and don’t leave any dust in the bottom of your cup. Being cleaner means the main grade teas that go into our teabags get to infuse in a slightly more open weaved teabag that let all the flavour out.
There are two main ways that we buy our teas – from smallholder co-operatives and gardens.
+ How we blend
The taste of tea depends on a combination of factors including soils, altitude, climate, and the way it has been plucked and processed. Regions in different countries have intrinsic qualities too – for example people who love Assam tea look for a full-bodied tea, with a rich and luxurious malty character.
The same tea tastes also very different in hard and soft water. This means our taster and blender have to think about where our tea will be drunk when the blends are being created. This takes expertise, and it has taken him a long time and a lot of cups of tea to get this skill just right. Over the course of a year he will adjust the blends depending on the taste of individual teas to make sure your cuppa tastes the same time after time.
+ Leaf vs Teabag
We often get asked what the difference is between teabag tea and leaf tea.
As tea is turned from fresh green leaves into the brew we know and love, different sizes of tea leaves are made. After being sorted by size, the larger leaves are sold for leaf tea, and the smaller ‘fannings’ grades for teabags.
While the larger grades of tea do taste a little bit different, what really makes the difference in taste is how the tea is plucked and manufactured before being sorted for size. Once the teas are in our factory we make sure that all the teas in a leaf tea blend or a teabag are of a similar size so that they all brew at a similar rate.
+ Tea Preparation
Using a good quality loose leaf or bagged tea really does make a difference if you want a perfect cuppa. That’s why we always buy clean, main grade teas that have finesse in the taste and don’t leave dust in the bottom of your cup.
Here’s a few tips that work for both leaf tea and teabags:
- Always use freshly drawn boiling water. (This keeps as much oxygen in the water as possible.)
- If you are using a teapot, add one 1 teabag or 1 rounded teaspoon of loose tea for each cup, and add an extra one for the pot.
- When using bagged tea in a mug, one teabag per mug will be the right amount.
- Start brewing your tea as soon as the water boils. Grandma’s adage of ‘taking the pot to the kettle’ is very true.
- Pour your hot water onto the tea rather than adding the tea to water.
- Brewing time makes a huge difference. Our tea blender John brews every batch he tastes for exactly five and a half minutes to extract all the flavour components. We recommend a 5-minute brew if you’re drinking black tea at home, and a 3-4 minute brew if your cuppa is green or white tea. Tea cosies are optional but do help to retain the heat in your pot.
- Pour and serve, adding milk, or a slice of lemon, or a little sugar to suit your taste.
If this makes a cuppa that is a bit strong for you put a little less tea in and still brew for the full five minutes. Brewing for 30 seconds means you are missing out on some of flavours in your brew.
+ Fascinating Tea Facts
- The English word tea and its many cousins (e.g. tay, thé, tey) trace their roots back to the name for tea in the Chinese Amoy dialect: Te (pronounced "tay"). The British English slang word “char” for “tea” arose from its Mandarin Chinese pronunciation “cha”.
- The first tea ‘Clipper’ (or speedy cargo ship) launched in Britain was the ‘Stornaway’, launched from Aberdeen in 1850.
- The ‘credit’ for inventing ‘afternoon tea’ is often given to Anna Maria, 7th Duchess of Bedford in the 1840s. With the large gap between the light luncheon and evening dinner, the Duchess called for tea to be brewed in their drawing room for refreshment. By inviting her aristocratic friends to join her, the Duchess made the idea so fashionable that such gatherings soon became an essential part of British life.
- The first ‘tea-room’ in Britain appeared in Glasgow in the 1870s.
- Legend has it that tea originated about 5000 years ago in ancient China. The innovative and curious emperor Shen Nung insisted that for hygiene purposes, all water in the palace should be boiled. When out visiting his kingdom one day, the Emperor and his men stopped to boil water to drink and leaves from a nearby bush fell into the water. Apparently the brew that resulted was so refreshing, the emperor ordered samples of the bush to be brought back to the palace to experiment. Afterwards, word spread and this new phenomenon became fashionable. Infusing tea leaves in a teapot became a widespread practice in China early during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). Thus "modern tea drinking" is probably less than seven hundred years old.
- Tea is made from the leaves or buds of the tea bush Camellia sinensis. Both black and green teas are made from the Camellia sinensis bush and have similar quantities of antioxidants and caffeine.