Recommendations for European tea?
All the supermarkets seems to sell the same brands and I have no idea if any of them are mostly processed in Europe or elsewhere in the world.
Do you have recommendations? I like the ones with a fruity taste more.
This one is my current favorite:
::: spoiler Click to view
Bewley's is Irish and their gold blend is nice and strong. Gonna brew a cuppa in a bunch of minutes btw ☕️
Portugal has the oldest tea plantation in Europe, in the Azores. It's one of the only places in the entire continent with the necessary weather to grow tea. Give it a try.
Their Hysson is pretty tasty, with a slight honey aroma. I can recommend it.
This place has also an interesting history and you can visit their very traditional processing facilities on Sao Miguel island.
I love Yorkshire gold, easy to find over here in Canada.
Yorkshire tea is the GOAT. Happy to see it has fans outside the UK
This is the answer. Top lad.
I’ll pop the kettle on shall I
I can't believe nobody has mentioned that the largest tea company in the world is European: Lipton Teas and Infusions B.V., which is headquartered in Amsterdam. Their main brands are Lipton, PG Tips (a leading UK brand), Lyons (Irish), and TAZO (their American brand).
I believe their biggest European factory is in Poland, and they also still have one in the UK. If you buy their tea in Europe, it will almost certainly have come from one of their European factories. The tea itself is obviously grown outside of Europe.
Tea (and coffee) are kind of a tricky one for this topic. We don't tend to grow tea leaves / coffee beans in mass quantities in Europe. Please correct me but I thought tea was mostly grown in India and China and Japan and those areas whereas coffee in South America / Africa. They'll be shipped over to Europe for roasting for sure.
And berry tea is not tea. I will die on this hill.
A lot of tea comes from Africa too. Kenya is one of the world's biggest tea producers (number 3, after China and India), and African tea is a major component in most commercial blends.
Closer to home, Turkey is also a fairly sizable producer, although because Turkey is also the world's largest tea consumer most of their tea is consumed domestically rather than exported.
Japan actually isn't a very big tea producer, by volume. Other producers which beat Japan on volume are Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Even Argentina produces more tea than Japan.
Oh yes, forgot about Turkey. We had fun drinking tea there.
Though it's not (currently) done on a large commercial scale, you can absolutely grow tea plants in the UK.
There's a few small companies doing it, who normally produce fairly expensive stuff, but also you can grow the plant (Camellia sinensis) yourself in most areas of the UK in a pot in the garden.
Good quality loose-leaf tea comes mainly from China, Taiwan and Japan. Bulk tea, like what goes into teabags, comes from India, and some other countries. There is some tea production in Europe, but last time I heard, those leaves tend to be expensive and not as good as Asian leaves. Blending and scenting can of course be done in Europe, but the raw ingredient comes from somewhere else.
And, yes, something like tisane would be a better word for the non-tea teas.
Tea Adventure's Online Tea Shops list is a good tool, if you want to find tea sellers. You can use the text box in the upper right corner of the list to filter the shops. For example, write "europe" in it, and you get only European tea shops.
Do you count herbal tea? We have a lot of that in southern Europe. Here's some from Greece (probably not exported though) https://www.finoherbs.gr/en/product-category/teabags/ This site is very low on details but most of these herbs grow here naturally and they probably do in adjacent countries too.
France has "Les 2 Marmottes" https://www.les2marmottes.com/ but they don't do tea exclusively, they also have "infusions"
Rooted in our local region, in Bons-en-Chablais, we are part of an ecosystem while maintaining close control over production, from plant selection to canning. All our infusions and teas are produced in France. We work primarily with committed farmers and local suppliers, and we strive every day to reduce our impact on the environment.
I buy from Lerbs & Hagedorn, based in Bremen
Love clipper tea !
Our favorite at home https://www.compagnie-co.com/
1663 https://www.1336.fr/ they went bankrupt a few years ago and instead of closing, they became a worker owned coop. They've been thriving ever since and their tea is really nice!
I also really like French upper range chains Palais des thés and Mariage frères, but they're fancy and expensive.
Teapigs - https://www.teapigs.co.uk/pages/about-us
I love the loose herbal teas from Sonnentor (Austrian company). They are sometimes leaning towards weird esoteric behavior like until about 10 years ago they drew a line through the EAN-Code... But their tea is amazing and they are also participating in economy for the common good.
Afaik Sonnentor also has a good financial compensation model for the laborers on the tea plantations they source from.
I'm new, can you explain what this means? Why did they have a line through the barcode? I found the official blog post from 2013 where they pledged to stop doing it, but it doesn't really explain why they were doing it in the first place.
German:
Die Diskussion in den letzten Wochen hat uns gezeigt, dass das Thema „Entstörung des EAN-Codes“ bei unseren Kunden sehr polarisiert.
Wir haben uns intensiv mit den Reaktionen dazu auseinandergesetzt und Informationen recherchiert. Unsere Entscheidung deshalb: Wir werden den Strich quer über den Barcode künftig nicht mehr auf die Etiketten drucken.
Wir schätzen die Rückmeldungen unserer Kunden sehr und setzen uns intensiv mit den Bedürfnissen auseinander. SONNENTOR steht für Freude und ein gutes Gefühl. Manchen unserer Kunden gibt ein Strich quer über den EAN-Code genau dieses gute Gefühl. 2007 haben wir deshalb den Strich auf den Etiketten eingeführt, ohne nähere Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema.
Aufgrund der vielen Reaktionen und unserer eigenen Einstellung haben wir uns nun bewusst gegen das „Entstören des EAN-Codes“ entschieden.
Die Umstellung wird sicherlich einige Zeit dauern. Innerhalb des nächsten Jahres sollten aber alle Produktetiketten ohne entstörten EAN-Code ausgeliefert werden.
English machine translation:
The discussion in recent weeks has shown us that the topic of “de-interference with the EAN code” is very polarizing among our customers.
We've carefully considered the reactions and researched information. Our decision has therefore been this: We will no longer print the line across the barcode on our labels.
We greatly value our customers' feedback and engage intensively with their needs. SONNENTOR stands for joy and a good feeling. For some of our customers, a line across the EAN code gives them exactly that good feeling. That's why we introduced the line on our labels in 2007, without further consideration of the topic.
Due to the many reactions and our own attitude, we have now consciously decided against “de-jamming the EAN code”.
The transition will certainly take some time. However, within the next year, all product labels should be delivered without a suppressed EAN code.
tl;dr:
SONNENTOR stands for joy and a good feeling. For some of our customers, a line across the EAN code gives them exactly that good feeling.
Huh?
I kept searching and finally found an article which explains what was going on: What is the Barcode Conspiracy Theory? Explanation, Meaning, Definition - Bedeutung Online
Barcode conspiracy theorists believe that the barcode on food emits dangerous radiation when scanned at the checkout, and that people need to protect themselves from it. According to them, the radiation emitted not only degrades the quality of the food, but is also harmful to humans. According to the barcode theory, harmful vibrations are released during the scanning process, which are transmitted to the human body. With interference suppression, the harmful effect can supposedly be neutralised. The interference suppression is done in the simplest way: According to this, it is sufficient if the barcode is crossed out.
All right.
There are people out there that believe any kind of barcode (or other graphic data transfer methods) influence everything around these codes. So having a regular barcode on your food items influences the food itself according to these people.
So Sonnentor decided to draw a line through the barcode so it can't "affect" the food anymore.
It's unscientific bullshit that's why they got a lot of criticism for supporting these weird believes.
My favourite is Betty’s Tea Room Blend https://www.bettys.co.uk/bettys-tea-room-blend-tea-80-tea-bags-1
The best thing about Betty's is the brown bread icecream 🤤
I could demolish a kg of that!
I really like Meßmer and Teekanne. They have a great variety of all kinds, many of them sweet and fruity. Currently I have their apple tea.
They claim that most of the ingredients are ethically farmed and approved by the rainforest alliance. I don’t, however, know how much of that is sourced in Europe…
I could literally eat this stuff
I accidentally did that once, when I drank tea in the dark and didn’t notice the bag got a hole.
Do not recommend haha.
Picwick. It's Dutch, has tons of flavours and I personally love their winter tea and Turkish apple.
Edit: Caramelized pear!
My favourite brand! Nice to know I've been supporting an EU company the whole time!
Dry some leaves of this guy before it blooms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamaenerion_angustifolium. You can squeeze them by hands before drying or not, the tea will be kinda "red" or "green" accordingly.
This thing is awesome too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypericum, just dry the flowers or any part of the plant with blooming flowers attached.
If you are into fruity tastes, just dry loads of raspberry leaves or whatever berries you have and steep them with tiny amount of any tea.
We have a shop that sells some good teas made in Finland: teemaa.fi
Fredsted, don't know if it's available in your location, it's a danish company, makes a great licorice/mint tea