Brew News - the Yorkshire Tea blog

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.

We work hard at Yorkshire Tea to keep Britain in proper brews and Yorkshire Tea flowing. Because more and more people are getting the taste for a good, strong satisfying cuppa, we often have to put in overtime to fill the 22 million teabags we make every day. You’re a thirsty lot.

There are four Yorkshire Tea production lines at our factory in Harrogate, but we don’t simply call them 1, 2, 3 and 4. Oh no. Each is named after one of our favourite Yorkshire rivers: the Wharfe, Nidd, Swale and Esk. It’s much nicer having names isn’t it?

If you’ve got a box of Yorkshire Tea, you can actually tell which river it flowed down to be bagged and packed. Take a quick look at the back of your box now and you should see a code just before the use by date…. it’s a series of letters and numbers. Found it? Good.

Now it should look something like: 2164 NBO 14:46.

Right, let’s start with the numbers. The ‘2’ indicates the year, in this case, 2012. Next ‘164’ is the 164th day of the year, which was this Wednesday. Don’t worry if yours is older, every box is cellophane-wrapped for freshness to last 18 months and once they’re opened, they probably don’t hang about for long.

The first letter is the river name, which in this case is ‘N’ for Nidd which is the river that is just a mile from us in Harrogate. The others are ‘W’ for Wharfe, ‘S’ for Swale and ‘E’ for Esk.

The second ‘B’ letter tells us which actual machine on Nidd made the tea bags and packed them into the box.

The last letter tells you which blend it is; ‘O’ for orange Yorkshire Tea, ‘H’ for Hard Water and ‘D’ for Decaffeinated – though you can tell that from the front of the box, of course.

Finally, 14:46 is the time this pack was born.

So what? Well, we do this not only so you’ll know which river your proper brews flowed down at our factory, we do it for quality control purposes. So if there’s ever a problem with a single tea bag, we can trace it right back to the day, production line and actual machine your Yorkshire Tea was bagged and packed by. We’re very big on quality control here.

We’ll also let you into another secret. If you happen to be a bit posh and drink our Yorkshire Gold tea bags, then the last letter will be either a ‘W’ or an ‘E’. This is just another thing that makes Yorkshire Gold so special. These letters stand for ‘West’ and ‘East’. Because water is generally harder in the East of the UK compared to the West, we actually blend Yorkshire Gold especially for hard water for customers on the eastern side of the country so wherever you live, you get the best possible brew.

Why not let us know which river your box flowed down by leaving a comment below?

We all like to think we make a decent cup of tea, but do you go to quite the same lengths as our lot?

In the sales room, our tea buyers taste up to a thousand teas each day, to sift through the samples and get a sense of where the best teas are coming from. To make sure this is done properly, each one has to be precision-brewed. But some of you have asked: what does that mean exactly?

To find out we spoke to Adrian, one of our tea sales room team. (It’s his birthday today too, so what better time for him to pop up on the blog?) Together with Mo, Neil, Helen, Katie and Damien they ensure all the tea samples are lined up ready to taste, on time, every time.

Adrian explains that first, a small amount of the dry tea leaf is displayed on the counter for inspection. Meanwhile, exactly 5.6g of tea is weighed out and put into a special cup, which is then filled with freshly drawn and boiled water. A quick stir and then the lid goes on for exactly 5 and a half minutes.

It’s worth noting that’s effectively double-strength, so this is some serious flavour we’re talking about. They do it this way because it amplifies any good or bad qualities in the tea, which really helps our buyers when tasting.

Also, although our tap water is soft, we have a regular delivery of hard water to brew with as well – soft water can often disguise imperfections in tea, so we like to taste samples in hard water too.

When the timer goes off, the special cups are tipped to one side so the ‘liquor’ can pour through a serrated space, filtering out the leaves. Once this is done, the leaves are tipped into the lid and displayed upright for another level of inspection.

The last step is adding milk, which is done using a soup spoon to make sure the amount is always the same. After that, it’s over to our buyers to start slurping!

Every now and then we get a letter from a customer that really makes us take stock and appreciate how lucky we are.

Today it was this poem from Patricia Rose Knapton, a loyal Yorkshire Tea drinker. It’s so nice we thought we’d share it with you.

A Cup of Tea

There is nothing quite like a cup of tea,

That good old fashioned brew,

For somehow putting the world to right

When the tea is shared by two…

A cup of tea and a slice of cake

Is inviting and appealing

For there’s something about a cup of tea

That is comforting and healing…

When brewed with a little compassion

And poured with love and care,

Then served with milk of kindness,

No other brew can compare…

To Yorkshire Tea.

As if that wasn’t lovely enough, this is actually taken from one Patricia’s book of poems, which are sold on the Help for Heroes website to raise money for charity.

Do you love tea enough to write a poem about it?

We’re constantly amazed by the dedication of our customers. From the photos we get of hikers holding a box of Yorkshire Tea at the top of Kilimanjaro to Arctic explorers blogging about brewing up among the icebergs, they never fail to impress with the extraordinary lengths they go to for a proper brew.
The latest is Chris Blanckley. Earlier this year, Chris told us how, after retiring about five years ago, he suffered a pulmonary embolism, which acted as a wake-up call to get on and do some of the things he’d always wanted to.

So it was that he came to apply to take part in the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. As a crew member on De Lage Landen, he would be sailing 5,000 miles across the Atlantic from the UK to arrive in Rio De Janeiro over a month later.

In support of Chris’ mission, we happily supplied him and the crew with enough tea for their time at sea. And recently he got in touch to tell us he’d returned home safe and sound.

(It seems that, to Chris and his crew, being pounded by waves miles out to sea was never allowed to get in the way of a proper brew.)

“At long last I have returned home and begun to sort out my photos and stuff from my trip to Rio.
We celebrated Yorkshire Day on 1 August with a Teddy Bear’s Picnic and umpteen cups of Yorkshire Tea (which happened to be our skipper’s favourite).

The aprons were a great success and the tea was very much enjoyed. Thanks again for your generosity in sorting this out for me. I hope you like the photos, we certainly had fun on Yorkshire Day!”

As some of you will have read here before, ‘guts’ is a professional tea-tasting term often used to describe strong, full-flavoured teas – teas like the top quality Assams we put in our luxury blend, Yorkshire Gold.

Now, as well as tasting it as part of a blend, you can also enjoy these qualities in splendid isolation. Our rotating Season’s Pick range is just switching over to Assam (until early next year) so look out for it appearing in shops near you any day now.

Our Season’s Pick range consists of three premium Rwandan, Kenyan and Assam teas – the key components of Yorkshire Gold. Through this range we offer a chance to sample each type of tea on its own, picked at the height of its growing season, when the flavour of the tea is at its very best.

You should be able to find it in most Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose stores. Let us know what you think of it!

To celebrate the first ever Rainforest Alliance Week, we thought it was a good time to reflect on what the Rainforest Alliance means to us – and more importantly to the people who grow our tea.

Veteran Yorkshire Tea drinkers will know that we’ve long been committed to trading ethically. We’ve built long-standing relationships with our suppliers by regularly visiting them in person, and by paying premium prices for top quality teas. We’ve always chosen suppliers based on shared values, and we work with them to ensure that they are socially and environmentally responsible.

But as we’ve grown, it became clear that by working with a third party we could do even more of this kind of work, and have an even more palpable effect on the ground. So, after much discussion with our suppliers, we took the joint decision to work with the Rainforest Alliance – an extra level of assurance for customers because it means the tea estates and gardens that we work with have also been independently certified.

Of course, that little green frog appearing on our packs is not the end of the story. When we first started working with the Rainforest Alliance it signified that at least 30% of our blends came from farms they had certified, but this was just the beginning. It also signified a further commitment – that we will work with our suppliers until all of the tea in our blends come from certified farms.

It takes time, but working in this way means we can continue to work with the tea-growing communities we’ve built such strong relationships, not leaving them behind, but bringing them with us.

If you’d like to know more about what working with the Rainforest Alliance means in practice, keep in touch – throughout this week, we’ll be blogging in more detail about the work that’s being going on on the ground, and our plans for the future.

What a month we’re having – first off we send Little Urn on a tour of the UK to celebrate his return from the States, then we end up being surrounded by boyband fans in London. It turned out One Direction were in the building next to where Urn was parked, and Louis from the band is a massive Yorkshire Tea fan.

Once we learned that, we gave his manager some goodies to take in to their band meeting, and later that day Louis tweeted about us, giving rise to hundreds of 1D fans tweeting about us too.

Which is obviously not a normal week for us!

Then it began to snowball. Next up, comedian Alan Carr added to the tea-tweetage by revealing his love for Yorkshire Tea to his 1.1m fans. This led to a reply from DJ Sara Cox, who quite agreed, and later from Pineapple Dance king Louie Spence.

Just when we thought it had begun to calm down, we found out that sports presenter Gabby Logan had joined in the twittering to declare that she too was a YT fan, with former Spice Girl Mel B doing the same later.

For a Yorkshire family business, it was a bit more attention than we’re used to, but we weren’t complaining. And then we thought it was all done and dusted.

Until this morning, when we discovered that the One Direction boys were down the road doing a radio interview in Leeds! Quick as a flash we set off in Little Urn to surprise them with a proper brew or two.

You can imagine our disappointment when, 5 minutes from Leeds, we learned they’d left the building… But as luck would have it, we found out they were headed for Bradford. We fired up Urn and headed off to hunt them down.

A few minutes later and we were pulling up outside Pulse FM in Bradford – just in time too!

Out came Louis and the boys, and our Heidi was able to serve them all a much-needed cup of tea. They were lovely lads and really appreciative, and the tea certainly went down well.

After all that running about, we needed one too!

After months spent rescuing Brits in America from terrible tea, our travelling tea-mobile Little Urn is back in the UK!

How would you like to help decide where he goes next?

Based on previous requests from Yorkshire Tea Facebook fans, Urn’s going on a ‘Lap of Honour’ to the following areas: Brighton on Mon 25 July, South London on Tue 26 July, North London on Wed 27 July, Bristol on Thu 28 July, Birmingham on Fri 29 July, Manchester on Sat 30 July, and York on Sun 31 July, finishing at a special Yorkshire location on 1 August, Yorkshire Day.

But where he stops on those days is up to you! If you have an event in or near any of those areas on those days and you want Urnie to be part of it, then make a request in the comments below (or post a message on Yorkshire Tea’s Facebook wall) and we might come along to serve up free cups of top quality tea!

Meet Erika, our friend from the Rainforest Foundation UK. She’s just been to the remote bit of Peru where we’re working with local communities to help protect the rainforest, so she’s got lots of stories to tell.

But what would you like to ask her? Whether you want to know how we’re actually saving trees, why this area is such an important place to start, or even just what life is like in the middle of the rainforest, just ask away, and we’ll put your questions to her very soon.