Ahmad Tea – Majestic Breakfast
Earlier this month, I attended a Tea Discovery Workshop, hosted by Ahmad Tea, to launch their new range of Beyond The Leaf teas, which are produced in collaboration with the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and will soon be available to purchase at a Kew Gardens gift shop near you.
(There’s only one Kew Gardens, obviously. So the nearest Kew Gardens gift shop to you will be the one in West London, regardless of where you are.)
It was all very exciting being wined and dined (well, tea’d and sconed) by a tea company, like I was a respected tea journalist. I feel like I can officially add “Influencer” to my tea fancier CV now that I’ve gotten a free cream tea out of it.
The cream tea was lovely, by the way, all little sandwiches and cakes and scones and jam. Before we tucked in, we were given a quick etiquette lesson by Afternoon Tea Expert, Eileen Donaghey (@afternoontealondon). Teaspoon behind the tea cup! Scones should be broken not cut! And, most importantly of all, when holding a cup of tea, keep your arm flat against the side of your body while imagining that you’re holding a piece of paper that you don’t want to let fall. This is presumably to stop yourself inadvertently elbowing your companions in the face as you drink.
The new range of Kew teas comes in four varieties: Majestic Breakfast, Splendid Ceylon, Elegant Earl Grey and Garden Afternoon. I had the opportunity to try each of these while under the guidance of Dominic Marriott, expert tea buyer and tea taster at Ahmad, who on a regular working day samples around five hundred cups of tea.
Of the teas we tried, Garden Afternoon seemed to be the nicest and Majestic Breakfast – a coarser, more CTC-y blend was my least favourite. As Majestic Breakfast is the tea that was given to me to take home, that’s the one I’m going to be reviewing here.
It pains me to say this (and not just because I don’t want to discourage other teamongers from inviting me to fancy tea junkets) but I’m not all that enamoured with Ahmad tea. I’ve only reviewed one Ahmad tea before which was during the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championships where I pitted sixteen different English Breakfast teas against one another in a head-to-head knockout tea tournament. Ahmad’s English Breakfast was described as “lacklustre” and booted out in the first round.
Ahmad’s Beyond The Leaf Ceylon, Afternoon and Earl Grey blends seemed perfectly pleasant, but there was nothing about any of them that knocked my socks off. There wasn’t that hit of “Wow! Tea-ness!” that gets me really excited. (And I do get excited by tea on a regular basis. You only have to look at the large number of five star ratings on this tea blog to see that.)
Majestic Breakfast is a nothing-y, forgettable sort of tea. It has the knack that I’ve noticed with some other teas of tasting both over-brewed and under-brewed at the same time. It’s odd. I’ve met the people behind Ahmad tea blends and their passion for tea is genuine and infectious. Dominic the Tea Taster is a man who is devoted to his craft and I have nothing but respect for him. I bombarded him with questions during the tea event and felt a good deal more knowledgeable about tea sourcing, blending and tasting as a result.
So why, when you’ve tasted thousands and thousands of tea samples to produce the perfect tea blend, do you end up with a tea that tastes like Majestic breakfast? It’s all a matter of personal preference, I guess. One person’s “Majestic” is another person’s “Meh”.
> One person’s “Majestic” is another person’s “Meh”.
This is certainly the case! I mostly drink single estate Assam and Yunnan teas, but enjoy a classic breakfast tea every now and then. When I was gifted a tin of the Majestic Breakfast blend, it honestly blew my expectations away. Granted, this is on the scale of a mass market product, but it still made a satisfyingly robust first cup, and a really fragrant second brew. My first brew was something like two minutes, and then three for the second brew– it does taste very overextracted at three or more to my palate.
At any rate, I feel like it’s certainly possible to brew a better version of this tea if you hand-blend your own Ceylon, Assam and Kenyan tea but with this price and convenience, I absolutely keep this in my cupboard.