I wanted quality green tea, ideally from the UK, and after many conversations and research, I selected green tea from Dartmoor Estate Tea. The tea is high in polyphenols and anti-oxidants, and has a smooth taste and gentle aroma which compliments the rhubarb root and the other ingredients in the blend.
As quality UK tea is currently very expensive (around £2 a gram) and it is still a small market due to availability, we decided to partner with local tea suppliers, Carmarthen Tea Traders, to provide us with any additional green tea for our blend. All-in-all, this means currently 75% of our blend is grown in the UK. We want to be transparent about this, as so many companies say they are using Welsh or UK teas but some are just blending in country or using as little as 1% in their blend.
In the last two years, I have learned so much about the tea market in the UK and even more this week after spending two days at Dartmoor Estate Tea with Jo and Kathryn, picking and processing their tea. I now understand why it’s such a premium product and have more respect than ever for the UK tea sector.
We were joined by Dr Amanda Lloyd and Alina Warren-Walker from Aberystwyth University’s Smart Recovery team (Diet and Health group, Department of Life Science), who joined us to take samples of the plants (to assess metabolomic differences over the Estate), soil and conditions to better understand the bioactive composition and associated health benefits of UK tea.
The Visit
We had a tutorial from Jo about how to pick tea, which leaves, and which plants. I was pretty slow initially but soon got in the swing of picking the right leaves (mine is the middle basket).
After a few hours you realise how difficult it is to bend over the plants constantly looking closely and picking the correct leaves, whilst looking at the shape and growth of the plant. Once there are enough leaves you must go straight into preparing them for the next process (withering), otherwise, they oxidise too much.
So, each day, once we have picked enough leaves, we go back to the Tea House to weigh, and layout the leaves ready for processing the next day. The Aber Uni team and I were immensely lucky to have seen the whole tea making process from beginning to end (well, maybe not quite from the beginning as it has taken Jo and Kathryn seven years to plant and grow the tea plants to get to this stage).
Here are some photos of us picking and helping with all stages of the processing, right to the point where we enjoyed the fruits of our labour with a quality and well-deserved green tea:
Our first blend is now available through our online tea shop: tetrimteas.cymru/collections/tea-shop.
We hope you love it as much as we do!
Mari Arthur
For more information on our sustainability, research, trials, and the benefits of our Rhubarb Root Tea, you can take a look at our research page.
mari@tetrimteas.cymru | tetrimteas.cymru | 07799431060