Tregothnan – Single Estate Black
The wandering Tea Fancier has returned after a week of travelling through deepest, darkest Cornwall and Dorset. I was all set to follow my Tregothnan Tea School Masterclass write-up with a whole bunch of Tregothnan Tea reviews. I’m still going to do that starting right here, right now, starting with their Single Estate Black tea. I’m just starting a few days later than intended due to spending time in a bit of Dorset, that apparently doesn’t do all that being-connected-to-the-internet business. I have been without the World Wide Web for four days. I had to resort to making my own entertainment. I don’t recommend it, it’s rubbish.
So, tea review, here we go! The Tregothnan tea bag blends that I reviewed last week, use both English and Indian tea leaves – their English Breakfast tea contains Assam and Afternoon Tea includes Darjeeling. It’s a bit of a swizz, really. The tea packaging just lists “black tea” in the ingredients so you need to consult the website in order to learn that it’s blended with other teas not grown in the Tregothnan tea estate. And even then, there’s no indication of the percentages. Is their English breakfast tea 50% English and 50% Assam? Or is there only, say, 10% Cornish-grown tea in the mix? How small a sprinkling of locally sourced tea plant could one add to a caddy of Assam, while still labelling it as “Tea grown in England”?
There’s no such shenanigans with Tregothnan’s range of single estate teas, however. There are both black and green Single Estate teas available and with these, you know that every tea leaf in it is produced in Cornish soil, under Cornish sky in, as it happens, Cornwall.
At £39.50 for 11 grams, it is not – to put it mildly – cheap. Clearly small-scale tea production in the UK is pricey business. This probably explains the tendency to blend leaves with imported tea. Presumably this is so they can actually sell their main collection at affordable prices and turn some kind of profit.
Happily, given the price, this is a very, very nice tea. It’s good to know that Tregothnan tea leaves aren’t just coasting it and letting the Indian teas do all the heavy lifting in the other blends.
Tregothnan Single Estate Black is a smooth brew with a slightly malty taste. As you would expect, it can handle a bit of re-steeping. I’ve done three pots with the same leaves, without any deterioration in quality. Quite the contrary, in fact. As the leaves unfold in the pot, the sweetish bran-y taste really gets the opportunity to shine.
Here’s a question for seasoned re-steepers: How long do you keep leaves in the teapot for re-steeping? I can’t bring myself to go past the end of a calendar day. Are there people out there re-steeping their tea for days and days? Or is that crazy talk?
I bought six different tea blends at Tregothnan (in addition to the four basic blends already included in the complimentary tea selection I covered last week). Over the next few days, I’m going to review them all. I suspect I may have started with the best. Tregothnan Single Estate Black tea is a delightful and satisfying tea experience. It will be interesting to see how their other tea blends compare.
