We meet the Shropshire man behind Kolze tea, and find out why its special and what exactly is high leaf tea?
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00:00Hello sir how are you? Very well thank you. So we're here in Shrewsbury and you're the daddy of Coulter Tea.
00:08What is Coulter Tea? The tea is a Sri Lankan high grown tea so it's the premium quality tea that you can get and it's a new brand that I've bought to Shropshire.
00:23We're having a little chat off camera. It's all to do with where the tea leaves isn't it? The plantations on the hills. Just explain to our viewers the difference in a position as to where the plants are.
00:36Yeah so it's all to do with where the tea is actually grown and high grown tea like House of Coulter Tea is grown near the top of the hills or the mountains or in the clouds of the cloud forest.
00:48And that gives it it's particularly brilliant flavour because it soaks up all the moisture from the clouds that are covering it over certain times of the day.
00:57So what is it that kind of drew you into the world of tea? Have you always been like a tea drinking family then? Was that a staple?
01:05Yeah absolutely that's where it comes from I think but I just wanted to do something with tea which everyone's doing with coffee at the moment.
01:12Coffee is such an artisan drink but tea has so many different flavours and so many different types and styles and I just wanted to bring a little bit of the amazingness of Sri Lanka which is an amazing country to Shropshire.
01:25So you went over there didn't you? You sourced the tea. What do we call tea plantations? You went and sourced the leaves. How was that as an experience going over there?
01:36Sri Lanka is brilliant. The actual place is brilliant. The people are really welcoming. But the tea is some of the best tea that you can get in the world.
01:45So meeting people who own plantations and work on plantations and finding out how the tea is picked and dried and made has been really really useful in finding a great supplier.
01:56And if people want to get hold of your tea then where can they see it?
02:01So at the moment we're selling online only at houseofcolza.com and that's the best place to go and buy this English breakfast tea from.
02:11English breakfast tea, depending on how the leaves are, it kind of brews quite quick. That's why it's a good tea for a breakfast tea.
02:19Yeah that's right. We're using broken leaf teas rather than whole leaf teas. So this is a weekday tea which means you can take a tea bag, put it in your cup as you normally would and make a great cuppa a lot quicker than if you were brewing whole leaf teas.
02:37But you still get the good quality flavour of that high grown tea. So that's the difference between our brand and other brands that are out there.
02:45And you were saying you're thinking down the line possibly expanding the range into different types of teas, different leaves and so on.
02:52Yeah absolutely. So the broken leaf teas are great during the week but at weekends when you've got more time and you want to spend some time with family or friends, pop out the teapot and get a whole leaf tea and put that in and that will take longer to brew and the flavours are different again.
03:07And eventually we hope to be able to extend the range so that we have whole leaf teas as well.
03:12And are you a biscuit man with a tea?
03:15I'm anything with a tea. As long as it's got the tea, I'm good.
03:19What about this whole dunking, you know, oh you shouldn't dunk, oh no you should dunk, where are you on that? Are you kind of as you please?
03:26Do you know what, if you dunk biscuits in tea and you ruin the tea, that's just a perfect excuse for another cuppa.
03:31Grand. Well we wish you all the best with it. Thank you for bringing this to Shropshire sir, thank you.
03:37Thank you very much.