English Breakfast Loose Leaf Tea
English breakfast tea is a traditional blend of teas originating from Assam, Ceylon, and Kenya. It is one of the most popular blended teas in British tea culture.
Accounts of its origins vary. Drinking a blend of black teas for breakfast is a longstanding British custom. The practice of referring to such a blend as "English breakfast tea" appears to have originated not in England but America, as far back as Colonial times.
Accounts of the emergence of the blend in the UK give its origins in fact in Scotland, where it was initially known simply as "breakfast tea". It was popularised by Queen Victoria, having returned to London with a supply after tasting the tea at Balmoral in 1892 and, despite the Scottish origin, it subsequently acquired the prefix "English”.
The Putharjhora Tea Garden
This English Breakfast tea originates from the Putharjhora tea garden in a region of India serving as a gateway to Northeast India and Bhutan.
The garden was rescued by the current owners after years of neglect and bad agricultural practices. The community was suffering from low wages, bad treatment and excessive exposure to harmful pesticides widely used on non-organic tea estates.
Now the estate is a beacon of hope in the area - the estate workers are empowered to make decisions, are no longer exposed to chemicals and benefit from a Fairtrade partnership with the management. A more natural ecological balance has recovered and the flora and fauna on the estate is rich.
The composting of materials on the estate to provide nutrients to the tea bushes is fantastic and is a shining example of how organic systems really work on a large scale.
