Tea Review 77 - Tregothnan Tea

English Estate Classic Tea
English Estate Afternoon Tea
English Estate Green Tea
English Estate Earl Grey Tea
Tregothnan Tea

Tea and Britain. They go together like peanut and butter, like cup and cake, like sand and wich. Well, you get the point, however awkwardly made.

Of course, all of the millions (billions? trillions? gazillions?) of gallons of tea the British have guzzled over the last few centuries have been imported. Until recently there was no other option.

Enter Tregothnan Tea, the first company to offer tea that's actually grown in Britain. It all takes place at Tregothnan, an estate in Cornwall, in western England, that's been around since 1335.

The good people at Tregothnan were kind enough to send samples of each of their four teas. They are all blends of the tea grown at Tregothnan with assorted and sundry other varieties. They also offer a limited-edition, single-estate variety that is 100% Tregothnan. Unfortunately, it's so limited that it's currently not available.

I wasn't sure what the expect from these teas, but for the most part I was pleasantly surprised. Here are a few brief notes on each. Though they're available in tea bags, in each case I sampled them in loose form.

English Estate Classic Tea
Tregothnan's Classic Tea is a robust black that's similar to a breakfast tea. Which is okay by me. It mixes the Estate's tea with black varieties from China and Assam. A nice blend, with a good flavor and very little bitterness. Takes milk and sugar well, as they say in the tea catalogs, though that sort of thing is not my...cup of tea.

English Estate Afternoon Tea
Though I tend to gravitate more toward the stout Assam varieties than the delicate Darjeelings, I'd have to say that this blend was probably my favorite of the four. As I've already suggested, it takes Tregothnan's homegrown and mixes it with Darjeeling. Though I could taste a hint of the latter, overall it's an interesting mix that I can't quite compare to anything else.

English Estate Green Tea
This one is blended with what's simply described as "specially selected green tea." I'm going to assume that it was selected from China. I could swear that I tasted just the faintest hint of the gunpowder variety in there. This one's not really the bright shade of green you might expect if you're accustomed to Japanese teas, but more of a yellowish-golden color.

English Estate Earl Grey Tea
I've never been able to make my piece with bergamot - the "active" ingredient in Earl Grey tea. Though I have tried. So I won't offer much in the way of comment on this one, except to say that the flavoring is rather low-key. If I've got my story straight, the bergamot, as well as the tea, is grown at the estate.

Image: Tregothnan Tea

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