Rare English Breakfast Loose Leaf Black Tea

The term English Breakfast was invented in New York City in around 1901 to describe what English people drank for breakfast; a blend of black teas. Never before had tea been blended - this is what the British brought to tea. Up until this point teas had been sold and drunk much like single malt whisky. Keemun came from Qimen, Anhui, China. Darjeeling from the slopes of the Indian Himalayas. It was a profound breakthrough in the evolution of teas to begin to blend teas from such diverse terroirs.

The result was so fantastic it sealed the fate for many of us - we are hooked and enslaved to this most wonderous of drinks.

The point was never make something cheap and bland - like modern, industrial, dusty blends hiding in tea-bags - but to make something GREATER than the sum of its parts. This beautiful blend combines the finest Chinese black teas with the best from around the globe.

(There is no Assam in this blend, which would have been traditional, because we have always struggled to find a farm crafting orthodox (hand-crafted), organically grown tea of amazing quality, that also supports the people who live and work on the land in a way that makes us proud to be associated with them. But we have always found Malawi tea can substitute superbly - far better indeed.)