Henrietta Lovell
Tea-Lady
About the Rare Tea Company
There is a confusing array of teas on the market today. Most tea companies offer you a huge range from the mediocre to the good. Rare Tea is not that sort of company. We sample the finest and just select the best.
Our trade is fair. We don't haggle with our farmers. We pay them what they ask.
"I have been personally sourcing all our teas since 2004 . I travel to small mountain tea gardens, mainly in the famous tea region of Fujian, China where they have been growing teas for over five thousand years. Our teas are not mass-produced in large industrial gardens. These whole leaves and tips are skilfully produced by artisans and tea masters.
"Tea may come from the same regions and have the same name but not all tea is equal. It's rather like fine wine or champagne: in a terroir there may be many producers growing many grapes but they don't, of course, all produce the same wine.
"Genuinely rare and incredible, teas of these qualities are hard to find and only produced in extremely small quantities."
Henrietta Lovell (Founder and Director of Rare Tea Co.)
"Being picked when fresh and redolent of firing, its essential goodness had been cherished instead of wasted. Such tea was intended for the court and high nobility."
Lu Tung
, 8th Century
We keep our packaging to a minimum. Good tea must be protected from air and light so it is packed in individual foil pouches as soon as it is picked. It is then put in a tin so that you can keep it fresh once its opened. We hope you like the tins and either recycle them or, better still, re-use them.
This really sets our tea apart: it is as fresh and fragrant as the day it was picked when it reaches you. This is not true of teas which are bought from brokers, shipped in bulk and re-packaged, however beautifully.
All our teas are shipped by sea not air-freighted. Because our teas are lovingly crafted rather than industrially processed our carbon foot-print is only little. Our white silver tip tea, for example, is entirely processed by hand - they do not even use electricity on the tea-garden.