What should a tea be?

Three things. The leaf, the pick, and what is in the bag with it.

1. It should be loose leaf, not dust

Tear open a standard tea bag and you get brown sand. That is CTC tea, crushed and curled into granules, or fannings and dust, the small pieces left once the proper leaf has been sorted out. It brews fast and strong, and it is what most of us grew up with.

Tear open one of ours and you get loose leaf. Whole leaf, not cuts, rolled the slow way. Give it three minutes and it opens in the water and lets its flavour out gently, layer by layer. The cup tastes like something grew.

Loose leaf used to mean a tin, a teapot, a spoon, and a hunt through the drawer for the strainer. Ours is loose leaf in a pyramid bag, with room inside for the leaf to unfurl. One bag, one cup, kettle on, three minutes. Nothing to find, nothing to wash up. And each bag is sealed in its own envelope, so the twentieth cup is as fresh as the first.

2. It should be the first pick of the year

The tea bush rests through winter. Its first new growth in spring, small tender leaves and a bud, is the first flush. It grows slowly in cool air, there is least of it, and it comes once a year, so it is the grade the trade pays most for. The cup is lighter, brighter and more layered than the summer and autumn pickings that fill most blends. All six of our teas are first flush, and it says so on the front of every box.

3. It should have flavours, not flavourings

These are two different words and the difference is the whole point.

A flavour is what an ingredient tastes of. Cardamom tastes of cardamom because the pod is in the bag. Rose tastes of rose because the petals are.

A flavouring is a substance added to make a food taste of something. In the UK the label only has to say "flavouring" or "natural flavouring". "Natural" means it came from a natural source, not that it came from the thing on the front of the box: a "natural flavouring" in a strawberry tea does not have to come from strawberries. It is usually sprayed onto dry leaf. It is legal, it is common, and it is how a tea can taste of a fruit that is not in it.

Our teas carry flavours. Chai: ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, pepper, star anise, fennel, carom, all whole. Kahwa: saffron threads, almonds, rose petals, cardamom. Moringa: moringa leaf, ashwagandha root, turmeric, tulsi, cinnamon, ginger, amla. The one exception is Earl Grey, which by tradition is scented, and ours uses natural bergamot oil pressed from the fruit, and nothing else.

The test is simple. Read the ingredient list. If the thing you can taste is on the list by name, that is a flavour. If the list says "flavouring", it is not.