CTC Tea

Details

The tea that actually goes into the morning pot. CTC stands for crush, tear, curl, the machine that takes the leaf and rolls it into hard granules, and it is why this tea gives colour and strength in under a minute and stands up to milk and sugar without disappearing. That is not a lesser tea, it is a different manufacture for a different cup. This one is a broken pekoe grade from upper Assam, bought as garden lots and made one lot at a time. The cheat in everyday tea is exhausted leaf. Tea already brewed commercially, for instant tea or by a bulk caterer, gets dried, re-coloured and sold back into the market as fresh, and because it has already given up its strength it is caught by water-soluble extractives, the share of the tea hot water can actually pull out. Colour is the second, added so a weak or tired granule throws a rich first liquor with nothing behind it. Iron filings are the third, and they are simply weight you pay for. The fourth is the grade itself: dust costs a fraction of granule, so a pack sold as broken pekoe gets quietly padded with it and you notice only that the tea has gone bitter and cloudy.

• No exhausted or re-dried leaf, water-soluble extractives tested per lot
• No added colour, and no coal-tar dye
• No dust padded into the broken pekoe grade
• No iron filings, every lot passes a magnet
• No added flavour and no chicory
• Upper Assam leaf, made in single garden lots, and the lot is printed on the pack
• It gives a strong dark cup in about a minute, which is the whole point, and it will turn bitter if you boil it for five
• Priced above the everyday shelf, because honest leaf costs more than padded leaf and there is no way around that