Brew News - the Yorkshire Tea blog

I can’t quite believe it’s been 10 years,” says Chris Powell, “and it was all inspired by a child’s imagination.”

Chris is the man behind one of our more unusual projects. It’s our community scrap store, the Cone Exchange, and it has just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

To explain just what it is, let’s go back to how it started.

Chris’ role began when he was showing pupils from Springwater Special School (based just down the road from our Harrogate HQ) around the Yorkshire Tea factory and one pupil spotted a used cone – which had been used to spool the cotton onto tagged tea bags. “She had a vision,” says Chris, “and asked if she could take it home to make an angel.”

Word spread around local parents, schools and groups and the demand for cone angels grew. Eventually they were in put in local shop windows and people paid to ‘adopt’ them. The money raised went towards a Starbeck in Bloom project setting up an after-school gardening club.

“I was really inspired by that,” says Chris, “and it just grew from there.”

It was around that time that Chris’ alter ego – the pirate Captain Rummage – started to appear at school assemblies around the area promoting the ‘three arrrs’ – reduce, reuse recycle and encouraging children to donate glasses, mobiles and stamps to Oxfam.

For a while Chris operated out of a shed at Springwater School, before moving in to his current building near our head office five years ago. The projects the Cone Exchange was playing a part in grew too, with charities using old coffee barrels and sacks to create furniture and bags and mroe and more and more items which had previously been considered to be wasted – from us and other local businesses – being sold through the scrap store.

It was only three years ago that Chris began devoting all his work time to the Cone Exchange and put all his energy into the project, while receiving support from a group of dedicated volunteers.

He’s now busy travelling the country to hold talks with WIs, hosting craft workshops in the local area and acting as a young enterprise advisor – all while helping eight local students with special educational needs to gain work experience in the Cone Exchange itself, producing craft packs that are sold to raise funds for our Yorkshire Rainforest Project.

As well as raising money for that, Chris and his team play an important role in reducing our waste and making a positive impact in our local communities.

Along the way Chris and the Cone Exchange have received various awards and honours. He’s been down to Buckingham Palace twice – first as part of a group collecting the Queen’s Award for Sustainable Business, then again eight months later collecting an MBE. He’s also scooped gold at the prestigious Food and Drink Federation Community Partnership Awards in the Environment Category and won plenty more besides.

“There have been lots of great highlights and milestones,” says Chris. “It’s been an incredible pirate adventure that’s gone a bit crazy, but I’m crazy myself, so it works very well.”

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.

With all the blending that goes on here, from selecting teas from up to thirty different gardens for Yorkshire Tea, to finding the very best in the world for our luxury blend Yorkshire Gold, a lot of different tea samples pass through our tasting room.

Once our expert tea buyers have a well-earned break from ‘cupping’ and assessing teas, they collect what’s left of some of the more interesting samples together and have a little fun.

“When we’ve a break, we take it in turns at getting really creative. It’s like ‘Ready, Steady, Cook!’ but with the best teas in the world – anything goes” enthused Kate, one of our expert tea buyers.

Every day, hundreds of 20g samples arrive in envelopes from far-flung places such as Kenya and India and some were growing on the tea bush just four days before we receive them. Many of these fantastic teas are used by our tea buyers to do a little informal experimentation.

“Around 3pm, we often put a hand blend together. Maybe a pinch of this, a dash of that and a sprinkling of the other. Then we see what the rest of the team think. They’re not all successes by any means and they’re quick to say if it’s not right” said Kate.

“Henry might magic up a really refreshing white tea blend, or Simon a really beautifully balanced one with a hint of Jasmine.“

This is actually how one of the more unusual Taylors speciality tea blends are created. For example, our Bettys Celebration Blend – which people ordered for weddings – was a blend of second flush Darjeeling and orthodox tippy Assam teas with a scattering of rose petals

You can actually give blending a go yourself, even with tea bags. “My mum likes to makes a pot with two Yorkshire Tea bags but also pops in an Earl Grey. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (Kate really did say that), she just likes a hint of it”.

When the buyers buy a tea that is so fabulous that they can’t wait for it to be shipped over – like a Rwandan Gisovu that’s in Yorkshire Gold, or a dry weather East of Rift Kenyan tea – they’ll often grab what’s left of the tasting sample and make a pot. As Kate always says of really great teas “They taste so fantastic, it’s like they’re singing in your mouth”.

So there you are. Our tea buyers don’t sit around drinking tea all day (actually they stand when they’re tasting), but when they do get a break, they blend tea. Now that’s dedication.

With the deadline for applications to our new grad scheme approaching, we asked our Head of HR Anna to tell us a bit more. Here’s what she had to say about it…

“Bettys & Taylors is a business centred around people and relationships, so development is a real focus for us. With fewer businesses offering graduate placements these days, I’m really pleased we’re in the fortunate position to be able to open up 10 graduate placements to begin in September this year.

We’ve taken on graduates before and have some wonderful success stories as a result, but this is the first time we have taken on so many in one intake. This presents lots of challenges (not least reading all the applications we’re receiving!) but there are lots of pluses to taking on 10 at once too. We hope the graduates we choose will form a peer group and will benefit from going through their learning and development journey together.

The programme is open to all graduates who meet the criteria. This may include some who graduated several years ago – we welcome a really wide range of applicants.

I’m looking forward to the assessment days in July, when I’ll get to put faces to the names on application forms. It’ll be rewarding to see the successful applicants grow and develop in their careers here.”

The deadline for applications is 12pm on Monday 11 June, so get in quick – and click here if you’d like to know more.