Rare Tea

On a wet and miserable Tuesday in June we had the most splendid evening at Paul A. Young’s chocolate shop in Islington. Over the past few months, Paul and I have been working together on producing tea chocolates and bars, and this evening saw the launch of our White Silver Tip tea chocolate. We plied members of the press and bloggers with cocoa nib infused gin and jasmine tea cocktails, before introducing our wonderful collaboration.

Paul is a true chocolate genius and created a chocolate that got the most out of our beautiful, delicate silver tip. He used a water based ganache so as not to overpower the tea, and a similarly light flavoured, smooth chocolate, so they complemented each other perfectly. Over the next few months we will be creating more tea chocolates, and you’ll be able to buy our chocolate and tea gift sets very soon from our website.

Click here to hear more about our White Silver Tip tea chocolate

Last Year we won 3 Gold stars for White Silver Tip Tea and 1 Gold Star for Oolong.

This year I entered the others: Jasmine Silver Tip, Whole Leaf Green Tea and Emperor’s Breakfast and they ALL won Two Gold Stars.

Really chuffed. Its the Oscars of the tea world. The stars are given out in blind tasting by the the great and good of the food world and their high opinion gives me a huge boost.

Onwards and upwards!

This morning in The Independent Mark Hix wrote a brilliant recipe for:
Loganberry leaf and silver-tip tea jelly

Serves 4

I had a panna cotta flavoured with blackberry leaf a little while back and thought what a great idea it would be to carry out a similar experiment with the leaves of the loganberry bushes growing in my garden in Dorset. I’ve used silver-tip tea here from the Rare Tea Company (rareteacompany.com), but you could use any good silver-tip tea.

500ml water
120g caster sugar (less if the juice is sweet)
A couple of good pinches of silver-tip tea
A couple of handfuls of loganberry leaves
A few sprigs of mint with some of the small leaves reserved
3 sheets of leaf gelatine (11g)
100-120g logan or tayberries

Bring the water and sugar to the boil and stir until the sugar has dissolved, stir the tea, loganberry and mint leaves and leave to infuse for 1 hour. Strain the liquid through a fine-meshed sieve and leave to cool but not set.

Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in a shallow bowl of cold water for a minute or so until soft. Squeeze out the water; heat about 100ml of the liquid and stir in the gelatine until dissolved then stir into the rest of the liquid. Put the jelly somewhere cool, but do not let it set.

Fill individual jelly moulds, or glasses, or one large mould, with half the loganberries, then pour in half of the cooled jelly. Put in the fridge for an hour or so to set, then top up with the rest of the loganberries and unset jelly. This allows the berries to stay suspended and not float to the top. Return to the fridge. Serve with thick cream or ice cream.

If you have any Loganberry leaves in your garden please send them to me. I’d love to try it…

I don’t know if you noticed but we have a new white tea which is rather perfect for a wintry January after an indulgent December.

Like White Silver Tip Tea
White Whole Leaf Tea is a delicate white tea from the presitgeous Fuding area of Fujian, China. Both teas undergo the least processing of all teas having been just dried in the sunshine. They retain higher levels of antioxidants than other teas because of this. Indeed, it’s grown on the same farm from the same bushes as the silver tips.

The difference is that it is harvested differently.
Instead of just nipping the leaf bud before it opens to the first set of spring leaves (the silver tip) the tea is plucked to include the first spring leaves and the bud. This allows a more complex and developed flavour. Its still clean and fresh like a silver tip but with another level of -I know this sounds wierd- “creaminess”. You really must try it for yourselves because the tea is infinitely more eloquent than I am.

Its rich in antioxidants that help the body get rid of toxins which cant hurt after Christmas. And its delicate and delicious which is always good.

I do hope you all have a lovely white (silver tip tea) Christmas.

It really, really helps with the hangover.

Not that you would ever overindulge but just in case you had to offer solace to someone who had, obviously.
All the best.
Henrietta
Tea-Lady

A few weeks ago I said I’d send anyone who ordered White Silver Tip Tea a free sample of Green Leaf Tea so that you could experiment with blending at home. This is, afterall, a proud British tradition cruelly usurped by the teabag people who think they know better than we do what we want.

Well, I’ve had such a wonderful response that I’m going to extend the offer. If you order either White Whole Leaf Tea or White Silver Tip Tea and send an email at the time of ordering with the subject header:

Free Green Tea Please

To: cs@rareteacompany.com

I’ll send you a free sample of green tea to experiment with. You may want to blend it with the white tea or you may believe it’s better savoured alone.
I’d be very grateful if you’d let me know how you get on.

This offer is open for two more weeks until the 28th November.

This weekend the article about Rare Tea was ‘the most recommended’ in the National German newspaper DIE WELT’s Sunday supplement. You can read the full article here.

I’d like to welcome all my new German readers and thank them so much for their emails and orders. I’m so ignorant that I cannot actually read the article. I can only guess it says kind rather than slanderous things by your response and the great volume of orders coming from Germany this morning.

I’m really chuffed to tell you that my White Silver Tip Tea won the coverted THREE GOLD STARS Great Taste Award from the Guild of Fine Food.
Out of 1150 Gold awards only 72 got the prestigeous 3 stars.

Oolong also came away with a Gold star.

I’m so proud.

I’ve never won anything before and, okay, this isn’t me its my tea but it feels pretty good. I go to great lengths to find the best -here I am on Mr Che’s tea garden near Funding in Fujian when the award-winning white silver tips were being harvested.

“Henrietta’s white silver tip tea is simply exquisite.”

Anjelica Huston

In an ideal world we’d make fresh pomegranate juice by squeezing at least half a dozen on a conventional lemon squeezer. The pith is extremely bitter so it’s essential that not even the smallest spec gets into the juice.
Yes, this is a hard and sticky job. You can buy pomegranate juice.

Serves 6
5 leaves of gelatine
seeds of a fresh pomegranate (optional)
¼ l pomegranate juice
¼ l white silver tip tea

(If you’re looking for something sweeter you can dissolve a couple of spoons of honey in with the gelatine but it’s gorgeously balanced, both sharp and soft, with just the pomegranate juice).

Use a generous pinch of white silver tip tea (about a dessert spoon) and leave to infuse for a full six minutes. Then strain the tea and allow to cool.
Soak the gelatine leaves in a small bowl of cold water for five minutes then stir into the cooling tea until dissolved. Add the pomegranate juice and the seeds.
Pour into glass bowls and refrigerate for about six hours.
Easy.