Portsea B'fast (Assam) - 90 grams tin

Refill pouch: 90 grams tin

Tippy Assam teas - two leaves and a bud. From the height of the quality season "second flush" July crop.

The liquor is bright, golden and malty in flavour. Best with milk. You can sip this and savour every nuance, or simply gulp it down !

A great tea for coffee drinkers as it has a strong mouthfeel. A real wake up beverage.

The leaves are designed to retain their flavour. This is a seasonal tea. There will not be any of this quality and character grown before July 2015. So stocks are limited. Such is nature !

 We also offer this very same tea in pyramid teabags.

Water temperature:           100 Celsius    

Brewing time :                    2 to 5 minutes

Dosage:                                 1 tsp / 200 ml

Drinking temperature:    55 to 80 Celsius

Ideally with a little bit of milk.

 

Further comments: Assam can, like Yunnan in China, claim to be tea's original home. The closest points of the two regions are only a bit more than 200 km apart.Tea bushes - trees in fact as the bushes generally grow to 15 metres if not pruned - have only  been found growing wild in Assam and Yunnan.

Assam teas are noted for their robust character. The best of which have a malty chracter - especially those harvested in the quality second flush period in June and July. The teas are low grown teas, at 500 metres and below in an area north and south of the Brahmaputra River. The tea growth period is hot and humid. The tea bush variety  is Camellia Sinensis var Assamica. All of which adds to thick strong malty teas.

As has often been the case in the history of tea over the last 200 years, it was a Scotsman who played a leading role in the development of a regional tea industry. Robert Bruce, an adventurer and entrepreneur in Assam in the 1820's, came across wild tea in the region. It was grown and drunk by the Singpho ethnic group. A race of people who straddled Assam, Burma and Yunnan. Robert Bruce was of course delighted as he recognised a potential alternative to China. He died a year later, but his brother Charles Bruce took up the cause again in the mid 1830's. He sent samples to the botanical gardens in Calcutta, where scientists confirmed they were indeed Camellia Sinensis tea seeds, but a different variety to those found in China. Charles Bruce grew the plants commercially and sent samples to London where they were well received. The first shipments of Assam tea landed in the UK in 1838. The Indian tea had arrived. And it soared over the next century, and green tea consumption in the UK was well overtaken by black tea.