White Silver Tip
Jasmine Silver Tip
Whole Leaf Green Tea
Oolong
Emperor's Breakfast
White Whole Leaf Tea

This flowering tea is made from silver tips, the finest and most highly-prized of green teas. Meticulously hand-tied, the tips will gently unfurl during infusion to reveal a vibrant marigold flower.

This is not style over substance. High in antioxidants and low in caffeine and tannins, these downy silver tips are skilfully prepared to combine their delicate, fresh flavour with the natural sweetness of the marigold. This is a truly delicious tea unlike any other.

Each flower may be infused three times to create three pots of fragrant tea. If care is taken not to over-steep the tea (we recommend four minutes) increasing subtleties of flavour will be revealed with each new infusion.

Use fresh water just below boiling point.

4 flowers.

Also known as Silver Needle and Bai Hao Yinzhen, this exceptionally pure and natural tea undergoes the least processing of all teas retaining the most health giving properties.

The silver tips are delicate leaf buds at the point of unfurling. They are harvested with gloved hand by the most experienced pluckers.

Silver tips have a single growing season and can only be plucked on days when there is no rain or cloud so that they can be carefully hand dried in natural sunlight. This allows the tips to retain their covering of velvety silver down that gives the tea its exquisite and distinctive flavour. It has an delicious aroma and a wonderfully clean and refreshing taste.

In the Song dynasty, The Emperor Hui Zong wrote that "white tea has the rarest and most delicate flavour".

Other white teas you may encounter are combined with opened leaves and stalks to bulk out the quantity. Some are even mixed with black tea to intensify the flavour. Rare Tea Company sells only the finest quality silver tips carefully sourced from the high mountain tea gardens of the Fujian province of China

When infused white silver tip tea brews to a pale golden cup.

Jasmine Silver Tip Tea has a deep, intense flavour due to the silver tips being scented no less than six times with jasmine flowers.

The silver needles are carefully mixed by hand with fresh jasmine flowers. At an exact temperature and humidity the jasmine flowers give off their fragrance while the silver tips are able to absorb the jasmine's scent. The tea is then dried and the jasmine flowers removed. This process is repeated six times to add a unique depth of flavour to the sweet and mellow silver tips.

Green tea has been enjoyed in China for 5,000 years. Today, world-wide interest continues to grow, stimulated by an increasing understanding of its benefits to our well being. The large scale tea companies, however, have attempted to capture consumers with the lure of these health giving benefits rather than by the quality of their teas.

Rare Tea Company is endeavouring to reverse this trend. We do not offer broken and lower grade leaves, often called 'dust' that may be hidden in tea bags. We supply only the finest grade whole leaves.

Our Green Leaf Tea has been carefully selected from among China's finest teas for it's unique quality. As the leaves unfurl they develop a round, mellow flavour that is truly delicious.

Oolong tea is the favourite tea of China. It originated in the Fujian Province where is thought that it was first produced at Mt Wu Yi Shan about 400 years ago at the end of the Ming dynasty.

Interest in Oolong is currently high due to clinical research into properties of the tea that enhance the body's ability to metabolise fat. Extremely rich in polyphenol, research suggests that oolong tea can be used in effectively aiding weight loss and controlling cholesterol by activating the enzymes that are responsible for dissolving triglycerides.

A truly epicurean tea, this top grade oolong comprised from only whole leaves which have been partially fermented to the exact point at which the rich floral notes and heady melon fragrance are developed. We have carefully selected this exemplary tea for it's incredible flavour.

This is a strong, dark tea which comes from a small Fairtrade estate high in the mountains of Malawi. Deep and satisfying it is the perfect afternoon tea with such a rich complexity of flavour it’s like drinking tea in 3-D.

Each tin comes with one of a collection of short stories written with great kindness by Alexander McCall Smith.

Our rooibos (red bush) is from a farm in Cedarburg Mountains of South Africa. Rather than being farmed as a mono-culture it is harvested wild where it is both an indigenous and sustainable. It grows within a diverse eco-system where the leopards roam, and the taste is simply beautiful and incomparable.

As rooibos is not from the tea family (Camellia Sinensis), and a legume, it is 100% caffeine free.