BEST WITHOUT MILK

Decaffeinated using the safe method of CO2, which also leaves more of the flavour quality in the leaf. It is mild, with notes of flowers and honey, a copper coloured cup and pleasant fragrance.

This tea has such a complex, astounding, rich, ripe fragrance that I cannot describe it well enough to do it justice! I have noticed nuances of honey, vanilla, peach, orange, musk rose, nectarine, quince, lichee among many others. The picturesque Phuguri garden in the Mirik Valley grows the rare and best clonal tea bush variety known as AV2. This clone produces the best tasting Darjeeling but will only grow in a small number of places there. The flavour is as exquisite as the aroma so if you like Darjeeling you simply must try this. Phuguri is a bio-organic garden.

This is a slightly richer charactered tea for the First Flush with notes of orange blossom, fresh cut grass, wildflower hay, grapefruit, hazelnut and a subtle, honeyed spiciness.

This very rare tea grows wild in the woods of Georgia, near the Mtirala National Park, just a few kilometres from the Black Sea. These hand-produced teas have the quality of some of the finest teas in the world grown in Taiwan and are similar in complexity. The soft, infusion almost without any bitterness has nuances of wild berry, maple, pine, malt, raisins, honey, cocoa, caramel, apple, chestnut and spice. The long, wiry matt black leaves also look like those of Taiwanese teas, the larger leaf size reflecting the fact they are produced on tea trees rather than bushes. Many of these tea trees were planted in the 19th century and until recently were not harvested. The rich forest soil, the surrounding trees offering shade mean that these wild trees produce naturally high quality material for artisan tea makers to express.

Only young Benifuuki leaves are first harvested by hand and then stored and oxidised for 3 months in the dark at low temperatures. This laborious process results in a tea that is extremely high in methylated catechin content, which is claimed to help combat hay fever and seasonal allergies. The flavour is smooth, full of honey and floral notes with some cool, mentholated, mineral tones normally found in Japanese green teas. Other flavours noted are apple, quince, raisin, cereals, muscatel and vanilla.

This is one of the rarest and finest of China's black teas, indeed the world's. It is a tea master produced, organically grown, long tender leaf variety from the Lion Mt. in Qi'Men with a light bodied, honey-sweet, chocolate malt infusion. It is a tea with a pronounced flavour yet with very little tannin and makes a good afternoon or early evening tea. It is made with the first golden down covered buds of spring, full of nutrition, picked before the Chinese Qing Ming festival. To put this wonderful tea's rarity into context it would make just 200,000 of the U.K's yearly consumption of 60,225,000,000 cups! Remember this is just the U.K, my calculator didn't have enough digits to work out the world's consumption! We can never get enough of this tea to last the year so try it while you can.

Jun Chiyabari is a family run tea garden established in April 2000. The tea is aromatic and depending on the variety or cultivar and processing, flowery, fruity, grassy or nutty. This batch also has the special 'muscatel' character found in some Darjeeling and Oriental Beauty teas.

A classic blend that has doubtless changed over the centuries but this version is still incredibly popular. It is a blend of two distinctive types of tea from China that combine to produce a smooth, light and refreshing cup. Hints of chocolate, orchid, rose and a warm, woody character means it is equally at home with or without milk and makes a delightful afternoon tea.