About Rare Tea

Rare Tea Company is an independent company based in London.

The company was founded in 2004, by Henrietta Lovell (known as the Tea Lady), to source and supply the world's best loose leaf tea - direct from farmers and their tea gardens.

From humble beginnings with just a handful of devoted customers, we now collaborate with many of the world's finest chefs, restaurants, bars and hotels from Noma to Claridge's.

Aims & Ambitions

Our aim is to benefit both the people who craft our loose leaf tea and our customers who drink it.

By always sourcing for quality over price we know we are bringing you the best loose leaf tea possible; and by buying direct we know we are putting the value of your tea into the farmers hands not middle men.

Our ambition is to redefine what good tea means. It must meet three criteria:

  • First

    It has to taste good. Well, better than good. It has to taste amazing.

  • Second

    It has to be good for you. No pesticides, herbicides, additives, flavourings, or bags with bleaches, glues and microplastics.

  • Third

    It has to be good for the people who make it. We pay the best prices for the best tea so that the communities we work with might thrive.

1 3

  • The art of tea

    All of our tea is crafted by skilled men and women on independent farms for the best flavour, not the cheapest price. We only offer you the best loose leaf tea created with great skill and pride, not an industrial product bunged in a single-use and unsustainable teabag.

    Nepali tea 

  • Global relationships

    We travel the world to seek out the best tea, finding routes to market for our farmers to customers across the globe. We build long term relationships with our farmers, tea communities and our customers, because relationships are everything and people matter.

    Sri Lankan Tea 

  • Farmers, not brokers...

    We buy harvests direct from farmers, not a commodity from brokers. This Direct Trade relationship ensures that the farm retains the full value of their tea, not middlemen. We never buy from auction where buyers dictate prices, we buy from farmers who set their own prices.

    Indian Tea