Brew News - the Yorkshire Tea blog

We’re absolutely amazed and actually incredibly touched by the amount of effort some people have gone to when entering our Yorkshire Gold competition. There really is a lot of love out there for our tea. What’s more you’ve expressed it in so many wonderful, creative and, it has to be said, sometimes rather strange ways.

We simply asked you to make and upload a short video that showed your love of our tea. We had a total of twenty two entries, which might not seem much to you, but just like Yorkshire Gold, it’s the quality, not the quantity that counts. Obviously, we can’t possibly mention all of them, and the judges are still pouring over them, but here goes with a few that caught our eye.

Francesca Ruta (above) entered a brilliant and painstaking “I Love Tea” stop-frame animation that took us, and her tea, to many exciting places including a supermarket kids arcade ride and her kitchen where her fella danced around her with a saucepan on his head (we suspect he may have been drinking something even stronger than our tea).

Victoria Schneider introduced us to Eddie, her cuddly Yorkshire Gold-loving, tea towel-wearing, birthday cake-baking pink pig. The cake looked delicious, incidentally – perfect with a cuppa.

Jainad Anwar loves his so much he took it to the skies on a jet – we don’t think they joined the mile high club, but you never know. Meanwhile, down-to-earth Dee McNamee from South Yorkshire spilt her life story of her relationship with Yorkshire Tea and how she is forever loyal to Yorkshire Gold, before bursting into a rendition of ‘Smile’ that even Nat King Cole would have been proud of.

We’re a bit worried about what Melissa Cannon’s husband might do (above) when he finds out she’s been fantasizing about actually getting married to Yorkshire Gold amid a flurry of tea bag confetti. It takes all sorts. Camilla Busbridge’s raunchy and steamy video also got our water boiling too, especially the music from Barry White (with two sugars).

There was some odd gender-swapping going on in “Omeland”, Di Coke’s northern interpretation of the intense scene in HBO’s ‘Homeland’ where Yorkshire Gold gave the game away. There’s nothing Amy Mackay likes more after a long hard day at work than lighting a few candles and dunking teabags and herself in a bath of our luxury brew.

A couple of spooky entries caught the eye too including Kelly McIntyre dressed, we think, as a witch with tea bag earrings and Simon Taylor frightened the life out of us with his austere and disturbing movie of a brew being made.

Finally, we just couldn’t help tapping our teaspoons along to Paul Brickles’ sambatastic “Something In The Water” (above) in which he samples and orchestrates his impressive personal collection of Yorkshire Tea paraphernalia to hip-moving effect. Love it, and yes, bring on Rio.

There are many more to watch and you can view them here on our Facebook page. The competition is now closed, but how about you? Are you a Yorkshire Gold lover? How would you show it? Leave a comment and let us know.

Our tea buyers taste up to 1,100 different teas per day in peak season, so they know when they taste a tea that is truly exceptional. To make Yorkshire Gold, our luxury blend, they are constantly tasting and chasing quality. Once they’ve identified the teas from up to the ten of the best tea estates in the world they expertly combine them to make our very best tasting cup of tea.

So what goes into Yorkshire Gold? Why is the taste so very special? Well, the leaves that go into Yorkshire Gold are mainly grown in three of the best tea producing areas in the world: Kenya in East Africa, Rwanda in Central Eastern Africa and Assam in North Eastern India.

Each particular tea has its own very distinct characteristics that, when blended together, create the really rounded brew that is unique to Yorkshire Gold. One thing all three teas have in common is that they are grown near the equator in perfect conditions.

Tea grows in ‘flushes’. These are when nutrients and enzymes are at their optimum levels that give tea bushes a spurt of leaf growth. For Assam the second flush produces the best and most prized leaves that give Yorkshire Gold its ‘gutty’ strength and wonderfully malty notes.

Now Kenyan tea has a very different flavour. It brings smoothness and balance to Yorkshire Gold. It’s a high-grown tea that represents Kenyan tea at its absolute peak and a real favourite of our tea buyers.

The third origin of tea is Rwanda and we really do take the pick of the crop for our Yorkshire Gold blend. This is another high grown tea grown in rich volcanic soils. The taste is sensational – its wonderfully bright, golden brisk and refreshing – “it’s like turning the lights on in your cup” according to one of our tea buyers.

Expertly blended, teas from these three illustrious origins combine to create a luxurious, full-bodied tea with a wonderfully rich flavour with a truly golden brightness.

It’s not just our experts that think that though. Judges from the Guild of Fine Food Great Taste Awards have repeatedly described Yorkshire Gold as ‘bright, rounded and delivered freshness’. More importantly though, what do you think? We’d love to hear your tasting notes in a comment below.

We’ve already discussed how Project Rwanda is making a difference to the quality of life for 10,000 smallholder farmers and is also improving the quality of our luxury Yorkshire Gold blend. This week, we’d like to explain a little about Rainforest Alliance who we work closely with.

You may have noticed the Rainforest Alliance logo on boxes of Yorkshire Gold. Well, the Rainforest Alliance is an independent body that is dedicated to helping people and the environment prosper. By being Rainforest Alliance certified, farmers not only work in a more environmentally and socially conscious way, they are also helped to improve the quality and quantity of the tea they produce, resulting in better prices and more tea to sell.

A big factor in achieving this is education. The Rainforest Alliance works directly with Rwandan tea growers to train them and their workers in better agricultural practices that minimize the effect tea growing has on the land. The farming communities are also supported in developing improved sanitation, health care, schooling, and housing which all help to improve the wellbeing of the farmers we buy from.

Some of the Rainforest Alliances’ key principles involve instilling relatively simple practical steps that tea farmers and workers can adapt to their own needs. These include better waste and water management, soil conservation, tree planting and the use of personal protective equipment.

Let’s take waste management. Tea production can produce waste water that is often, once used, left to stream straight back into rivers. By using a natural water filtration system, consisting of tiered beds of plants, the water is cleaned naturally and allowed to flow safely into the local water supply; proper composting provides a rich and free fertilizer that can be put back on the crop; organic waste can be used to produce natural biogas and recyclable waste can be separated and often sold.

Soil conservation is vital to allow the long term prosperity of a tea farm, not to mention the food security of local communities. In Rwanda’s tropical climate, heavy rainfall can easily wash away this vital commodity if measures are not taken to retain it. Composting, planting, and control of water run-off are all skills that Rainforest Alliance farmers take on board and which make a huge difference.

Finally, as their name suggests, the Rainforest Alliance has a particular soft spot for trees! Indigenous species are planted on certified tea estates across the tea-producing world. In Rwanda there are now a significant number of seedling nurseries established purely to supply tea farmers with hardwood varieties native to their country so they can help to preserve natural woodlands.

So all these steps not only reduce harm they also help make more money for the tea growers. Oh, and we get even better quality tea for our luxury Yorkshire Gold blend.

Over 75% of the tea that goes into our Yorkshire Gold and Yorkshire Tea blends currently comes from Rainforest Alliance certified tea estates and gardens. We’re gradually increasing these percentages and by 2014, we aim to have 100% of the tea in our tea bags supplied by Rainforest Alliance certified growers.

It’s possible, it’s worth it and it’s our commitment to improving the lives of tea growers, workers and their families worldwide. It’s working too – as 10,000 Rwandan smallholders will testify.

Last week, we introduced you to Project Rwanda and how it is making a difference in a country that’s suffered serious hardship in recent times. This week, we’d like to focus on how this co-funded initiative is improving quality – not just the quality of the tea itself but also the quality of life of thousands of farmers and their families.

Yorkshire Gold is a rich, full-bodied and refreshing golden brew that unites teas from the world’s very finest tea gardens and brings their wonderfully unique flavours together in your cup. Whilst the smooth malty flavours come from Assam second flush teas, Rwandan teas are responsible for the fresh and lively dimension to the taste. So the quality of Rwandan tea is very important to us.

Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills and it’s the combination of volcanic soils and high altitudes that makes the tea bushes that grow on these dramatic escarpments, which are often shrouded in cloud, so lush and verdant. In fact, so impressed are we with the quality of the tea produced here, we even offer a special ‘Yorkshire Gold Season’s Pick’ Rwandan tea, which is available for a limited period from late January each year.

To encourage and help growers in Rwanda to keep improving and producing the quality of the tea that’s an essential part of Yorkshire Gold, we need to all do everything better. We play our part by paying better, fairer prices for their tea crops. Rather than simply handing over funds, our experience tells us that it is better to improve through trade, not aid.

By matching a grant from the Department for International Development (DfID), we have co-funded a project to support 10,000 small-scale Rwandan tea farmers. The project helps them increase the processing standards and consequently the quality of tea has been raised too. Also, by partnering with the Rainforest Alliance we are working to help raise the standard of social, working and environmental practices so that Rwandan farmers can enjoy a better standard of living and quality of life.