From the World to Lincoln
There is a question we are asked surprisingly often: “Do you make the tea here?”
The short answer is both no and yes.
Tea is one of the great agricultural products of the world. The character in a fine Assam, Darjeeling, Taiwanese oolong or Japanese matcha comes from where it was grown, the variety of tea plant, the weather, the soil, the harvest and, crucially, the skill of the people who made it.
We certainly aren't going to improve on that by attempting to grow it on Steep Hill.
What we can do is choose very carefully.
For more than three decades that has been at the heart of Imperial Teas. Samples arrive from gardens, producers and specialist tea merchants around the world. We taste, compare and reject far more than we buy.
Price isn't always a reliable guide. A more expensive tea isn't automatically a better tea and, even when it is technically extraordinary, it still has to be enjoyable to drink. There are teas of astonishing delicacy and complexity and there are big, uncomplicated teas that make a magnificent mug with milk. Both deserve to exist.
Our job is to know the difference.
Then there are the things we really do make in Lincoln.
We blend many of our own teas here. Our Earl Greys and flavoured teas are made in the shop, allowing us to choose both the tea underneath the flavour and the ingredients we put with it. Coffee arrives green and is roasted by us in small batches.
That degree of involvement matters to me.
It means we aren't simply selecting a finished retail product from a catalogue, putting it on a shelf and creating a story around it afterwards.
The tea and coffee come first.
A shop full of rather different things
One of the pleasures — and occasionally one of the logistical nightmares — of Imperial Teas is the sheer range.
You can come in looking for a straightforward strong breakfast tea and leave with one.
You can also find yourself discussing a tiny seasonal Darjeeling harvest, a Wuyi rock oolong, a wonderfully sweet Taiwanese tea, an unusual natural coffee or a vivid green first-harvest Japanese matcha.
There is no obligation to become an expert before you're allowed to enjoy any of them.
In fact, after doing this for as long as I have, I increasingly think the opposite.
Taste it.
Do you like it?
Good.
We can worry about the terminology afterwards.
From the world to Lincoln
Our home at Norman House, 47 Steep Hill, is an important part of all this.
Lincoln has spent centuries receiving people, goods and ideas from elsewhere. We rather like continuing the tradition.
Tea from Asia. Coffee from Africa, Central and South America and the islands. Chocolate made from cacao grown around the equator.
All finding their way up Steep Hill.
Then hopefully finding their way into your cup.
That is really what we mean when we say:
From the World to Lincoln.
