Remember when you were little, and you were always told never to touch things? Usually when you were being dragged around the shops or at an aunt’s house?

Well, we’ve a bit of a hands-off approach at Yorkshire Tea, too.

Our tea leaves are a bit like fine bone china in many ways. They’re not just the best quality, they’re incredibly delicate too. That’s why our tea has been handled with almost obsessive care before it arrives at your supermarket.

At Taylors of Harrogate, we believe that the less tea is handled, the better the quality. This starts when it's carefully plucked from the tea bush by nimble hands, then gently spread out and left to 'wither' naturally before being processed.

Then, to treat our leaves with even greater TLC, we developed our very own leaf grade. Tea is 'graded' by being passed through a series of vibrating sieves which get finer and finer. but as we really only buy two or three different grades of tea from each supplier, it’s pointless separating them any more than that because we blend them back together anyway back in Harrogate. So we have some sieves removed and only use the ones we need, which reduces the amount our leaves are bashed about in grading.

Then there’s how we blend it. After precisely weighing out the various different tea leaves to our secret recipe, they are very gently mixed together in one of our special blending drums. These drums rotate very slowly and precisely, twelve times. Any less and the teas would not be properly mixed. Any more and the leaves could bruise and affect the flavour.

We've even been canny in reducing the number of bends in the pipes that transport our tea around our factory so they travel in as straight a line as possible. This avoids unnecessary bruising when the leaves hit bends in the pipes.

So next time you’re making a proper brew, remember this… tea is delicate, and needs handling gently. In fact, some say 'tea has ears', so speak in soft tones too.

At least if anyone catches you whispering to your tea bag as you gently place it in your mug, cup or teapot, you can now tell them the full story why.

In fact, if you’ve a story about how much you care for your Yorkshire Tea, we’d love to hear it – just whisper a comment in the box below.