Scottish Tea for Two?

It Seems Scottish Climate Ideal for Tea Growing

Well I never, I was listening to Gardener’s Question Time when they said that the best place to grow tea in the world is Scotland, well you could have knocked me down with a Tunnock’s Tea Cake. And when I looked into it is true and they have medals and certificates and stuff to prove it. Mind you it isn’t cheap, the Queen sups the stuff at Balmoral at a tenner a pop, or should I say a pot!

Highland Fling in the Tea Leaves

The tea company is based at Dalreoch Farm estate in Amulree,  which when I last looked was east of Loch Tay in Perthshire and the choice teas are retailed at places like the exclusive Fortnum and Mason on London’s Piccadilly. A spokesperson there identified the white teas as the second most expensive teas they have ever stocked.

A Long Scottish History in Tea

The business is relatively new with the first brews made only 4 years ago. It isn’t actually as strange as it all sounds as the tea growing regions in warmer climes is always at altitude which cools the air and the original tea growing area, Wuhan in China was a place that knew the meaning of dreich!

Fortune Hunter

And of course many of the original tea planters on the Indian sub-continent were from Scotland following the time when our very own Robert Fortune, born at Kelloe in Berwickshire stole a number of tea plants from the old Chinese Empire in 1848.  Robert was paid by the East India Company to get good botanical tea plant samples and learn the cunning secrets of the Chinese tea makers, who guarded their knowledge with the threat of execution. You see making tea is no mean thing as it involves drying, firing, rolling, and, for black tea, fermenting it. Fortune had explicit instructions from the East India Company to discover everything he could. He did it all superbly.

Have a Brew

Well we don’t want you to spend fortunes on Mr Fortune’s stolen goods, but we do want you to enjoy the taste of tea with fine bone china at a reasonable price.

The lovely Morris and Co mugs were designed only 40 years after Robert Fortune snaffled the tea from China. They are affordability itself! The Sanderson fine china mugs are the business and the Wrendale collection has both charm and a tea pot! And almost everything is on offer.

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