The journey behind Organic tea
The Tea House is proud to supply fine organic loose leaf tea. Our collection of exceptional organic teas hails from far and wide. From tea gardens in China, India, Japan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Rwanda. Infusions include a cooling peppermint tea from Germany and a soft sweet Rooibos from South Africa. We have an organic tea for every palate.
But what does Organic really mean in practice, and how is it applied?
In the United Kingdom, the word ‘organic’ has strictly protected legal status. Suppliers and packers of organic products are required by law to be certified – this gives the consumer peace of mind that products bearing the word organic have been grown, purchased, processed and packaged in a fully compliant environment, satisfying the UK’s strict organic standards, as defined by DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).
The Organic Food Federation serves as one of the UK's approved control bodies, alongside the Soil Association and others. Achieving and maintaining registration requires rigorous annual inspection, stringent record keeping, batch traceability and approved labelling. Quite a lot of work simply to legally use the word organic!
True organic tea is held to legally defined UK organic standards; it is not simply marketed as “natural”. Organic tea plants are grown without synthetic pesticides or fertilisers, and the final product contains no artificial colours or preservatives. Only fully certified operators can legally sell these teas as organic, ensuring purity from the garden to the cup.
Discover two of our Organic favourites
Rwanda OP Rukeri
A fine example and one of our customer favourites, is a black tea grown on a farming collective in Rwanda. Being certified organic, Rwanda OP Rukeri not only satisfies demands of the consumer but has a hand in looking after the environment in which it is grown, securing a viable healthy future for its farming families for generations to come.
Rwanda OP Rukeri is a full-bodied strong tea with warm, spicy and honey aromas. Yet is smooth and strong and can be taken with or without milk. Without milk it is rounded, sweetly malt with a hint of spice and a delicate refreshing citrus aftertaste. With a dash of milk, the tea demonstrates its rich deep copper colour and enhanced malt flavours. The cup is clean and refreshing taken both ways and is perfect for lovers of traditional tea.
Silver Needles
Another amazing organic tea from the other end of the spectrum is Silver Needles, a white tea from the stunning Guanxi province in southern China. Delicately plucked by hand, the downy buds are harvested for only a short period each year; thus, it is relatively rare.
After withering, the buds are carefully dried at low temperatures to preserve their attractive shape and downy nature. Silver Needles is naturally higher in caffeine than many teas, simply because caffeine is the plant’s natural defence against pests and pests particularly like young leaves.
The optimum temperature for brewing white tea is 80 degrees centigrade. This extracts slightly less caffeine and preserves the tea’s elegant and graceful in character. The tea may be brewed for slightly longer than other white teas for a full flavour sensation, or over repeated short steepings where the tea’s different characters develop one by one: the smooth cup with mellow floral and slightly stone-fruit notes.
Our commitment to Organic
Choosing organic is ultimately a commitment to uncompromised quality and flavour. The stringent regulations and thorough audit trails are not just bureaucratic hurdles; they are there to ensure that what ends up in your teapot is exactly what nature intended. When you buy from our organic range, you can be confident that every batch has been tracked and verified from the moment it was plucked to the moment it arrives in your kitchen.
At The Tea House, we take great pride in selecting teas that represent the very best of their respective regions. Whether it is a carefully managed community project in Rwanda, a rare harvest from China, or a refreshing herbal infusion, our organic collection delivers a superior drinking experience built on genuine integrity. We invite you to explore our Organic Collection and discover the exceptional character that careful, certified cultivation brings to the cup.
