TF Tea Cup Championships 2021
Teapigs Everyday Brew vs Bird & Blend Great British Cuppa
It’s the Final! After three weeks of (almost) non-stop tea action, we have reached the final of the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championship 2021! (Apparently our footballing equivalent has been a bit exciting too. But I’m sure you’ll agree that vicarious tea-drinking beats vicarious ball-kicking every time.)
Sixteen teams started this knockout competition and now we are down to two plucky teas ready to face one another mano a mano, cuppa a cuppa, to determine who will be the ultimate champion.
In one sense, all the teas that took part in this championship are winners. But in another, far more accurate, sense they’re not. There can, as every Highlander knows, be only one.
And this year (and possibly for all time, depending on whether I ever hold this championships again), it’s going to be either Teapigs or Bird & Blend.
Both Teapigs Everyday Brew and Bird & Blend Great British Cuppa have put in fine teamanship thus far in this competition. They’ve batted off a whole herd of well-regarded and tasty competitors in order to secure their well-deserved places in the final.
It’s funny that we’ve ended up with two teas which actually look quite similar to one another. Both tea bags eschew any dusty fanning nonsense, preferring instead rolled, pleasingly recognisable leaves. They’re both silky tea-temple-type affairs. Even the packaging is quite similar. Clearly, I have a type.
I wonder if anyone gets Teapigs and Bird & Blend muddled up in real life? Like when Mr Bird and Ms Blend (not their actual names, sadly) go to parties and introduce themselves, do they get people saying “OMG! I love your Rooibos Creme Caramel!” and then have to embarrassedly explain that no, that’s the other guys. And vice versa obviously. Maybe the Teapig Administration frequently receive emails asking them why they don’t stock Chocolate Digestives tea any more and have just started exasperatedly responding with “We never bloody did!”
This match was always going to be closely fought. You don’t get to the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championship Final unless you’re a teamonger who knows how to put together a damn good tea blend.
Teapigs’s Everyday Brew is a robust blend which combines Ceylon, Assam and Rwandan teas. Whereas Bird & Blend’s Great British Cuppa, containing Ceylon, Assam and Chinese Yunnan teas, is a slightly more delicate affair – albeit one that is decidedly at the ‘hearty’ end of the delicacy scale.
Both teams played exceptionally well. There were probably all kinds of goals and hat tricks and braces and things going on (I really don’t have the lingo to do proper footballing analogies).
But, even at this very high standard, one team put in the superior performance. And that team was Bird & Blend. I don’t know whether it’s the Yunnan or the superiority of their tea growers, or actual, literal magic sprinkled around their tea leaves (it’s probably all three) but this blend turned out to be literally unbeatable.
I am therefore delighted to announce that Bird & Blend Great British Cuppa is the winner of the Tea Fancier Tea Cup Championships.
This was a mission to find the best English Breakfast-type teabags in the known universe and, by Jove, I think we’ve got it.
