Morgan’s Brew – Morgan’s Brew
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This tea – along with a whole herd of other blends – was very kindly gifted to me by Morgan’s Brew. Being sent free tea is something I am very keen to encourage and if any teamongers reading this feel the urge to do so, you can contact me at em@teafancier.com or via my Instagram account @theteafancier.
Readers, rest assured that the freeness of any tea I review will make no difference to the star rating or the review itself, which will be as appropriately complimentary or condemnatory as I believe the tea in question deserves.
This signature tea from Welsh teamongers, Morgan’s Brew has left me a bit all over the place, and not just because I consumed six cups of tea in the writing of this review (although that might have something to do with it).
I wanted to like Morgan’s Brew’s Morgan’s Brew. It was part of a large consignment of tea that Morgan’s Brew sent to me last year for review purposes. So that, right there, was a very nice thing of them to do.
According to their website, this blend was where the whole teamongery business started. Morgan’s Brew honchos were the proprietors of a tea room in Shropshire.
“They were asked by their customers if it was possible to create a traditional cup of tea for home use. A plan was developed that a group of regular customers would sample a different black tea every day for a period of six months. After the sampling period was over, the collected results provided an overall winner. The top tea that they selected was a black tea from Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda and this was the beginning of Morgan’s Brew Tea.”
Who am I to argue with the tea room customers?
I wanted to like this tea, but I didn’t expect to like it. And that’s because of the way it looks.
I’m not saying I recoiled in horror when I looked at this tea, but maybe I did. In fact, let’s imagine that I fainted like a member of the Victorian aristocracy and had to be revived with smelling salts.
It’s just so very powdery. You see, unlike other black teas that Morgan’s Brew sent me (like Welsh Afternoon and Brecon Breakfast), there is nothing about these tea leaves that looks the slightest bit leaf-like. It looks like very tiny instant coffee granules. I don’t know much about tea, but one of the things I thought I knew was that the bigger the leaf, the tastier the tea.
So I figured that to drink this tea, I’d need to grit my teeth, hold my nose and think of England. (Alright then, Wales.) But you know what? Against my expectations. It’s rather nice. It’s not as nice as their Brecon Breakfast, but it is entirely drinkable. (I was originally going to review Morgan’s Brew and Brecon Breakfast in the same post but it turned out I have so much to say about Morgan’s Brew that Brecon Breakfast we’ll have to wait for another day.)
Having already consumed two cups of Morgan’s Brew and a cup of Brecon Breakfast at this point, I decided to make another Morgan’s Brew, and also a cup of PG Tips and a cup of Twinings Everyday so I could do a side-by-side comparison. Morgan’s Brew is way nicer than PG Tips. There’s no comparison at all. There’s not much to choose between Morgan’s Brew and Twinings Everyday, although if I did have to choose, I’d say Morgan’s Brew is slightly nicer.
I compared the size of the tea particles between these three brews and, in fact, Morgan’s Brew’s leaves are ever so slightly larger. But – and I think this is the crux of the matter – PG Tips and Twinings Everyday are both teabag-based so tiny tea particles aren’t unexpected. I’m not used to seeing loose leaf tea looking like this.
So what have I learned from this? I’m not sure. I still prefer Morgan’s Brew’s larger leaf brews over this one so I shan’t be rushing out to stock my tea-shelf with this particular powdery-looking tea just yet, but maybe, just maybe, I’ve learned something about not being too quick to judge by appearances in the future.
Today’s featured book is The Mabinogion by Lady Charlotte Guest. Back when I reviewed Morgan’s Brew Welsh Afternoon tea, I remarked that I didn’t have any books by Welsh writers, or about or set in Wales on my bookshelves and that I should probably rectify that. This book of Welsh folklore is an attempt to rectify that.
