Last week we were sent some tea to review. This is the first time we’ve been asked to review tea but, hopefully, not the last – we don’t just like a glass of home grown booze, we also guzzle our fair share of home grown teas.
The tea submitted to our taste buds is a collaboration between Cornish tea growers, Tregothnan, and water purification experts Brita. They found out what teas the Brits most prefer to drink and blended them together in a unique new brew which they have punningly named ‘Blend it like Britain’. So along with black tea from the Tregothnan Estate and some Assam tea are the UK’s tea lovers’ four favourite flavours: mint, chamomile, rose and lemon verbena.
No big surprises in that list, and the blenders have done an excellent job of combining them all together: we’ve been Brewing it like Britain on most days since receiving our tin.
To give you a taste of what each of those winning ingredients brings to the brew here’s a little more about each of them.
Chamomile
The musty floral aroma of dry chamomile flowers reminds us of health shops when we were growing up – black tea alternatives were few and far between but those hippyish health oriented stores were fairly well stocked and it was chamomile’s comforting qualities that led the way. Thankfully the Britta blenders haven’t been too heavy handed with the daisy-like flowers and the aroma and flavour is suitably comforting.
Mint
The next most easily detectable ingredient in the blend, mint is a tea makers dream, adding a freshness to whatever it is paired with. Black mint is the chosen variety and it does most of its good work at the end of each swig, filling the mouth with a healthy mint tingle.
Lemon verbena
This herb is often overlooked by gardeners but we’re pleased to see the country’s tea drinkers have given in a place at the top table. It has a lemon sherbet flavour that compliments mint extremely well and, although subtlety used in the resulting blend, brings it unique citrus freshness to the palette.
Rose
Both rose petals and hips are popular with tea blenders – the former predominantly for their aroma, the latter for their intense fruitiness. It’s the petals that feature in Brita’s bags but you would be hard pressed to notice their presence without seeing them among the ingredients first (a lot of people are put off by overtly floral perfumes in consumables so we’re guessing they took the side of caution). There is, however, an uplifting sweetness to the overall aroma of the tea which is almost certainly down to those pink petals, so even in small doses they’ve done a great job for TEAm GB.
The tea is available from tregothnan.co.uk and all profits will be donated to the mental health charity, Mind.
