Canton Tea Blog: Club

Multiple RHS Gold medallist, writer, broadcaster and herb guru, Jekka McVicar has joined Canton Tea in a venture to bring her passion and dedication to finding the best herbal infusions in the world. We are delighted to launch our new collection of herbal teas, now available on our website, packed in elegant tins with illustrations by Hannah McVicar. 

Jekka was blown away by this Lemongrass that comes from the same estate as the Ceylon (Week 18) - Amba Estate, Sri Lanka. Herbal tea isn't usually on the Tea Club agenda - but this one is too good to miss. Jekka tells us why....

Jekka: Mention Lemon Grass, Cymbopogon citratus, and it immediately... Read more

The first of three teas from Nepal to feature in the club is a robust black tea with similar characteristics to a Second Flush Darjeeling. We could be forgiven for assuming that Nepal has been producing tea for thousands of years, but this is not the case. Jane Pettigrew tells us more...

Given Nepal’s location to the west of the tea-growing mountains of Darjeeling and Sikkim, and the fact that it enjoys the same natural gifts – regular rainfall to water the slopes, Himalayan sunshine to warm the soil, swirling mist to protect the tea bushes from the exposed altitudes – as those neighbouring regions, it is easy to assume that... Read more

In this week's box is a very exciting thing indeed: the first Chinese new season green tea. We explain a bit more about why new season green tea is so exciting for us avid tea-drinkers, and provide a brief calendar so you know when to expect each tea. 

Why do we get so excited about spring green tea? Every year at about this time one or two lucky Cantoners will visit China to experience the spring picking season and taste the teas that we will stock for the next year, while the rest of the team in the UK spend the whole of April and May turning our heads excitedly every... Read more

We are delighted to welcome back Julien Gardin as this week's guest blogger. As head waiter of a world-renowned Michelin-starred restaurant, Julien is passionate about high quality food and drink, especially oolong tea. So when we decided to feature this famous Taiwanese oolong in the club, we knew who to call on for the blog. 

Julien: Dong Ding oolong tea is grown around Dong Ding Mountain, a branch range of Phoenix Mountain in Nantou.

Legend has it that due to rainy weather and slippery paths, tea farmers had to tighten the tiptoes (frozen tiptoes) so as to climb the hilltop to pick tea leaves.

Its origin dates back to 1841 when Lin Feng... Read more

Set high up in the misty, forest-covered hills of Meghalaya, on the banks of lake Umiam, LaKyrsiew organic tea garden is an idyllic spot, not to mention a perfect environment for growing tea.

Situated at 3,300-4,500 ft above sea-level, the hills of Meghalaya were first investigated for tea-growing when the original East India Company despatched its own 'tea agents' to the sub-continent in the early 19th century to identify where tea could be effectively grown.

The area on the banks of lake Umiam, with its high altitude, abundant rainfall and previously uncultivated soil, was declared ideal for tea-production. However, it transpired that this area was too remote to produce large quantities of... Read more

We welcome back our friend, tea expert Jane Pettigrew, to introduce our first Georgian Tea. 

Jane: Georgian Old Gentleman black tea is made by hand by Luri, the Old Gentleman after whom the tea is named. Luri lives in Nasakirali in the fertile Caucasus mountains in the northern part of Georgia which divide the country from its Russian neighbour. There was a time, before the break up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when Georgia was part of Russia’s empire and this northerly mountain region provided most of the tea that filled Russian samovars.

The first Georgian tea was planted in the 1890s when the Russians invited a Chinese tea planter... Read more

Following previous blogs on flora and history of Yunnan, we are now getting close to Ali and Jennifer’s departure on their sourcing trip to this heartland of fine tea. To mark the occasion here are some random bits of Yunnan-iana for ya.

Of course, the Cantonistas will not be the first exotic visitors to Yunnan. Venetian gadabout Marco Polo reputedly got his first sight of tattoos in Yunnan in 1283, observed the locals eating their meat raw with gold-sheathed teeth, and using shells as currency. 600 years later, the Australian traveller and writer, George Morrison gives a delightfully gentle account of his journey through what the locals call ‘South of the... Read more

This week I set out to write a piece about the history of tea in Yunnan, only to realise that, because Yunnan is generally regarded as the birthplace of tea, we will by default have to go back to the very origins of the drink we all love so much.

Would you believe me if I told you that tea has been consumed for almost 5,000 years? Sounds implausible, but 2737 BC is the date most often used to mark the birth of the drink we know today. Unfortunately for us though, Instagram hadn’t been invented then, so the events surrounding the very beginnings of tea are somewhat murky and mythologised.

Shen... Read more

Whilst Canton's Ali and Jen prepare for their imminent trip to China (and the rest of us bubble with jealousy), we have been lucky enough to coerce Michael Evans, head gardener at the renowned Packwood House, to tell us why Yunnan is a hotspot for tea lovers and botanists alike. Oh, and Michael just happens to be Ali's father...

Michael: Learning that your daughter is travelling to Yunnan can bring on strong feelings of envy to a gardener. Especially one who has spent years salivating over plants such as Rhododendron sinogrande - possibly the most splendid of all rhododendrons, its giant leaves and gnarled branches forming a forest from a single plant, or... Read more

In the seventh century, during the Chinese Tang Dynasty, the elite of Tibet discovered tea. Beginning as an aristocratic delicacy, it quickly became a daily necessity, but it had to be imported, first from southern Yunnan, with a secondary route from Ya'an in Sichuan. In exchange, the Chinese needed war horses and the sturdy Tibetan horses were ideal. This resulted in a two-way trade route around 4,000kms long which became known as the Cha Ma Dao, the Tea Horse Road.

For 13 centuries, the Tea and Horse Caravan Road was a network of rugged paths linking China with Tibet, Southeast Asia and India through Yunnan. These caravans facilitated the exchange of... Read more