22 TEA & COFFEE TRADE JOURNAL | www.teaandcoffee.net

( Tea Blending )

JULY 2010 23

Many customers ask about the dif-ferences between a BreakfastBlend and an Afternoon blend,

and are curious how we go about creatingnew blends as well.

Breakfast tea blends tend to contain teasthat produce a cup strong and robust enoughto “get the body moving” in the morning,allowing you to start your day with a kick.Conversely, afternoon tea blends aredesigned to be lighter in character and tendto be smoother on the palate, creating theperfect feel for a day winding down.

There are no specific rules or formula-tions about what specific teas go into blendsof tea. Most blends can differ slightly intaste and appearance from vendor to ven-dor and from country to country. This isoftentimes due to the ratio of each compo-nent used during the blending process.

English Breakfast is a tea blend, which istraditionally designed to accompany heartybreakfast foods, common in the Britishhousehold. This blend tends to includestrong, robust varieties of tea, which create afull, rich flavor when blended. In the U.S.,English Breakfast tea blends chiefly use alarge China Keemun leaf for the mainblending component. This full-bodied teafrom China is then blended with tea leavesfrom Kenya to achieve a deeper flavor anddarker cup appearance. English Breakfastblends may also include a brisk tasting SriLankan tea to achieve a nice cup that helpsget you going each morning.

Irish Breakfast is another popular andwidely recognized tea blend comprised offull bodied black teas. The tea is heavily con-

sumed in Ireland, which explains the name,and is chiefly comprised of malty-flavoredteas sourced from the Assam region of India.Many Irish Breakfast blends can containother black teas, including Darjeeling, tobalance the intense flavors that are charac-teristic of Assam teas. When brewed, the teais generally a very dark red to brown incolor, with a brisk flavor and an undertoneof dark, richly fermented malt. Due to itsstrength, Irish Breakfast tea is commonlyserved with milk, but some prefer to drink itwith lemon or sugar, or simply straight.

Scottish Breakfast follows the lines ofthe more popular English and IrishBreakfast blends; a strong tea with a robustflavor. It tends to vary slightly from theseother blends in composition by includingmalty Assam teas, brisk teas from Sri Lankaand the smoother Keemun teas from China.

Afternoon tea blends are typicallydesigned to be light and smooth in charac-ter. The base of these blends can be createdfrom the traditionally “easy drinking teas”

cultivated in China and Sri Lanka. Inmany cases the inclusion of floral scentedjasmine teas and other fruit pieces and fla-vorings would enhance the aroma and pro-duce a tea suitable for relaxing at the end ofyour day. Some afternoon tea blends mayoften include oolong teas, which are lightertasting and less caffeinated than black tea.

Custom blending is becoming more andmore common in recent years. The creationof an appealing tea blend requires the per-fect combination of tea components andexperimentation, requiring knowledge ofeach teas character along with some trial and

error to ensure the right balance of flavor. At Mark T. Wendell Tea Company and

at Grace Tea Company, we have several“tried and true” blends that have been someof our best sellers over time. Once we finda winner, we are meticulous at keeping ourformulas consistent over time to ensure thatonce we find that perfect cup, we continueto deliver it to our customers. Our employ-ees and even our significant others at homego through many rounds of tasting beforewe get to that cup! I recently created sever-al new tea blends. When I began the cre-ation process, I had to look past the attrib-utes of the individual leaf to determine howsome of our tea selections would be bestsuited in combination with each other. Forexample, a malty Assam tea combined witha bright Ceylon tea will blend into a robusttea that has a sharp color and strong body.While bringing these new blends to marketwas a lot of work, it was also a fun, educa-tional and creative process.

If you want to embark down the path of

With so many variations of single estate grown teas nowavailable to tea importers and consumers worldwide,the pairing of differing teas with one another make thespectrum of tea tastes, appearances and overall charac-ter almost infinite. There are hundreds of specialty teacompanies creating and selling tea blends directly to theconsumer. ( By Hartley E. Johnson )

About Tea Blends

combining teas, develop a vision about what you want your end resultto look like. Are you trying to make a strong tea, an easy drinking teaor a tea with spice or fruit notes? Once you have determined the direc-tion of your blending project, you can begin experimenting withbrewing your tea creations in anticipation of the final tasty results.

After your ideas about your tea blend have been established,it is a good idea to lay out the teas that you wish to blend and startcombining, creating ratios and then steeping. I recommend drop-ping a spoonful of each component tea into a cup in the amountthat you think would be most desired. When making a few sam-ple blends, make sure to jot down your notes for review when youcup the brew. It is important to combine teas that have similarsteeping times so that each tea component will reach its fullpotential. For example, the combination of a highly oxidizedblack tea with a delicate green tea will produce a less than desir-able cup of tea! Another important factor that comes into play isthe overall leaf size. If you combine two or three distinctly differ-ing leaf grades, then the end results may not be very appealing. Inthese cases, the larger leaves will float above the smaller ones, sep-arating significantly.

When you achieve a desired blend, it is best to let it sit for aday or so. This will allow the aromas from the different leaves tointermix for a desirable amount of time. After this time frame, ifthe blend still tastes great, it would be best to blend a smallamount no larger than a quarter of a pound. If this still tastes sim-ilar to your initial cup, then you can begin making larger batches.

One of my recent visions yielded a blend which I recentlylaunched, Manhattan Tribute Blend. I am extremely delighted withthe outcome (needless to say, it went through many iterations beforeI officially launched it!). This tea blend is the perfect combination ofIndian, Formosan and Ceylon teas, devised for late day and afterdinner consumption when the palate is satiated. When brewed, itproduces a bold cup with a slightly floral note. Differing from otherblends that we currently produce, it was the perfect addition to ourofferings. I created this blend in honor of a dear family member wholived his life in Manhattan and lost a battle to cancer last year, andtherefore named it in his honor, and as a tribute, donate a portionof the sales from this tea to cancer charities.

In order to keep our product fresh, we generally create about100 lbs. of most blends per week. When those outside of the teaindustry visit our facility, they are oftentimes amazed at the simplic-ity of the process. We use industrial mixers that are designed tochurn the contents for several minutes per cycle, to ensure contentsare uniformly blended. Once the teas are properly turned over andmixed together, they can then be stored in large air-tight containersuntil packaged for the consumer.

After dialoguing with several other blenders, both large andsmall, I learned that other specialty tea vendors utilize this straight-forward technology as well. One of the newest dry material uni-form mixers on the market today is the Continental ProductsCorporation’s Rollo Mixer, which has received numerous highrankings from within the tea industry; it comes in varying sizesand is reported to blend uniformly. The real advance in this prod-uct is in cleanout, product access and seal technology. The devel-opment of this type of blending equipment geared towards thespecialty tea industry’s specific blending needs has yielded a mod-ern twist to an age-old process.

Indeed the size and some features of the blending equipmentmay vary, but the overall result of the mechanical process yields thesame end result. Generally speaking, the hardest part of blendingtea is figuring out what teas will work well together, which teas donot, and as a tea blender, trying to establish an objective trust inyour palate. But once you find the recipe for a perfect cup of tea,make sure you hold onto it, your customers will thank you for it.

About Mark T. Wendell and Grace Tea Company Blends: Mark T. Wendell Tea Company was established in 1904 and GraceTea Company was established in 1959. Both companies areknown for their unique black tea blends, some containing as manyas 5 differing tea components. Mark T. Wendell Tea Company’sEnglish Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, Russian Caravan, and Iced TeaBlend are proprietary blends that have been blended with care fordecades. Mark T. Wendell has had numerous new product intro-ductions in the past year. In the same manner, Grace TeaCompany’s Winey Keemun English Breakfast, ConnoisseurMaster Blend and Owner’s Blend Premium Congou have a loyalfollowing for decades. 7

Hartley E. Johnson is Purveyor of Fine Teas & Custom Blender andCo-Owner Mark T. Wendell Tea Company & Grace Tea Company

26 TEA & COFFEE TRADE JOURNAL | www.teaandcoffee.net

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( Tea Blending )