It used to be the wine or whisky list that gave a place prestige; increasingly, though, the measure of a top hotel or restaurant is the calibre of its tea. Faced with declining alcohol consumption and growing demand for unique luxury experiences, operators are now lavishing as much attention on their tea offering as they do on fine wine.
‘In the last couple of years we’ve seen a real uptick in clients requesting something a bit more than the usual breakfast blend,’ says Alice Evans, director of tea at Canton Tea, which supplies many of London’s top restaurants and hotels. ‘They’re now wanting teas that are unusual, unique or bespoke, teas that you won’t find anywhere else. For some, there’s a sense that money is no object.’
For the launch of The Emory, London’s first suite-only hotel, Canton created a custom blend of Big Red Robe (a sought-after Chinese charcoal-roasted oolong), black artisanal tea from an all-female co-op in India and Japanese cherry-blossom leaves only harvested every two years. The resulting almond-scented amber tea is refined and designed for drinking black.
For The Emory’s cigar lounge, Canton devised a series of tea pairings inspired by the flavour profiles of dark spirits: a smoky lapsang souchong, a buttery, fruity Ali Shan oolong and a nutty-green Dragon Well. ‘We’re definitely seeing more interest in tea-and-cigar pairing in hospitality,’ says Evans.
Artisanal tea is a gift for food pairing, offering all the refreshment, tannin and terroir-driven complexity of good wine
Every suite at The Emory is also stocked with a selection of loose-leaf teas, including a Japanese genmaicha (a blend of green tea and toasted brown rice), plus a temperature-controlled kettle and brewing instructions to ensure each tea is enjoyed at its peak.
The Mandarin Oriental is famous for its tea programme. One of the more unusual teas Canton sources for the hotel is a sticky-rice tea from Laos, blended from rare Silver Cloud white tea leaves and nuo mi xian, an aromatic herb known as the sticky-rice herb because of its scent when heated. The resulting ivory infusion has a delicate scent of fluffy white rice and pandan leaves and a distinctly soft texture.
Exceptional caffeine-free teas – or tisanes – are also increasingly in demand, says Evans. For Nobu Portman Square, she tracked down a fabulous hand-roasted lemongrass tea from a single grower in Japan. Marrying fragrant lemongrass with sweet wood smoke, it’s like nothing I’ve tasted before.
Fine tea is a gift for food pairing, offering all the refreshment, tannin and terroir-driven complexity of good wine. Top chefs such as Hélène Darroze, Anne-Sophie Pic and The Clove Club’s Isaac McHale have all made it a prominent element of their tasting menus.
Third-generation sushi master Endo Kazutoshi is another famous tea buff – at his 12-seater omakase restaurant in London, Endo at the Rotunda, he serves an exquisite selection of Japanese teas from artisan merchant Postcard Teas.
Guests are welcomed with a cup of hot hōjicha in the machiai, a wood-lined seating area inspired by traditional Japanese tea ceremonies, before passing through to the dining area for a dinner of 18 courses. The first pairing might be a Fuji sencha, brewed first at 70°C and then 80, so diners can savour its journey from umami-rich to bright and fresh; followed by an ambient-brewed Black Sun, a roasted Japanese black tea with chocolatey notes and a rich, slightly oily texture. Dessert often comes with a soba-cha, a Japanese tea made from toasted buckwheat. In every case, the tea is listed on the menu alongside the name of the tea master who made it.
The dearest tea on the menu is a £26 Tie Guan Yin oolong from Master Wei in Fujian, China. ‘It’s expensive, but for that you get maybe seven or eight infusions,’ says head sommelier Toby Hanmore. ‘It’s a tea that just gives and gives and gives. The way it unfolds over the course of the meal is just incredible.’ Endo-san liked it so much, he commissioned a bespoke teacup especially for it.
Matcha, of course, is having a moment – although not all of it is high-grade. For the really good stuff, one must head to a specialist like Kettl in New York, which has been supplying the likes of Per Se, The French Laundry and Rosetta with fine Japanese tea for the past 15 years.
‘Since the pandemic, I’ve seen a radical shift in the demand for access to information, quality and authentic experiences,’ says founder Zach Mangan. ‘Customers are being led by their palates to discover a deeper side to Japanese tea.’ The shop runs workshops in everything from regional styles of matcha through to crafting the perfect matcha latte.
San Francisco’s three-Michelin-starred Quince is famously meticulous in the sourcing of its ingredients. When it came to creating a tea list, it enlisted the help of professional tea sommelier Gabrielle Jammal (who also oversees the tea programme at New York’s Baccarat Hotel). Diners in the newly revamped restaurant can now compare first- and second-flush Darjeeling, sip delicate Silver Needle white tea or finish their meal with an infusion of chrysanthemum or osmanthus grown at the restaurant’s own Fresh Run Farm in Marin County.
While some teas on the list are prestigious, Jammal has also seized the opportunity to highlight new developments in the world of tea. She singles out a passion fruit- and flower-scented summer oolong from the Jun Chiyabari tea garden in eastern Nepal, ‘which has really shone a spotlight on a region that previously didn’t have a big identity in the world of tea’, and Thunder Dragon Green Tea, the first tea to be exported from Bhutan.
Quince’s teaware was also a labour of love, designed by co-owner Lindsay Tusk in collaboration with ceramicist Daisuke Kiyomizu of Tokinoha Ceramics in Kyoto, Japan – it’s available now to purchase through the newly launched Quince online shop.
High-quality sparkling teas are being offered by more restaurants as an alternative to Champagne
The most valuable tea, pound for pound, tends to be very old pu-erh, a type of fermented and aged tea from China that is so prized, it actually has its own secondary market. A 2013 pu-erh from a 500-year-old tree in Yunnan is the jewel in the crown of the non-alc tasting menu at Hôtel de Crillon’s L’Écrin restaurant in Paris, bringing truffley, forest-floor notes to dishes such as seared duck foie gras or artichoke and Comté tart.
However, fine tea is no longer just the preserve of Michelin-starred restaurants, says Henrietta Lovell, founder of Rare Tea Company, which counts Claridge’s and Noma, as well as supermarkets like Waitrose, among its customers. ‘The Teahouse café and bar at Berlin’s Hoxton Hotel, for example, has a great list of Indian, Nepalese and Sri Lankan teas, which are served hot, iced or in cocktails,’ she says. ‘I particularly love the Broken Cloud – a very fragrant black tea from the foothills of the Himalayas; it is cold-infused and served on the rocks, so you get that malty sweetness, as well as the tea’s more delicate citrus and floral notes.’
High-quality sparkling teas are also being offered by more restaurants as an alternative to Champagne. Saicho’s Sixty Stone Mountain is a limited-edition, £60 sparkler made from fine black tea grown in a single high-altitude plot in Hualien County, Taiwan, which gives it sophisticated notes of apricot, honey, hay and cedarwood. It’s on the list of London restaurants including A Wong, Da Terra and Kioku by Endo at Raffles.
In a bid to showcase tea in new ways, Postcard Teas has also created Auld Tree, a series of limited-edition amber spirits made from copper pot-distilled malt spirit, re-distilled and infused with small parcels of ultra-fine Camellia sinensis. The first edition stars roasted oolong from four 125-year-old trees in the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian. Priced around £199 a bottle, it was snapped up by Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant before it was even released, making tea increasingly an option for diners from the very first drink to the very last digestif.
Artisanal tea specialists to seek out
Sakurai Japanese Tea Experience
Tokyo
This minimalist boutique and café in Tokyo’s Minato City is recommended by Japan tea ambassador Asako Steward. ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she says, ‘with a very good selection of special Japanese tea.’ By day, owner and tea master Shinya Sakurai hosts masterclasses in the art of tea service; at night, the place transforms into an eight-seater bar serving cocktails made with the shop’s own unique artisanal tea blends and sakes.
Postcard Teas
London
This cult tea shop near Bond Street only works with tea farms less than 15 acres in size, so you’re guaranteed to come away with something unique, whether a Heaven’s Scent oolong from a single 300-year-old tree, fine Japanese sencha or a Vietnamese lotus tea. Each pretty package is labelled with as much information about grower and place as you’d expect from a fine Burgundy. There’s also a very covetable range of teaware.
Kettl
New York and Los Angeles
With shops in New York and Hollywood, and a reputation for supplying tea from small growers that’s packed and sold as fresh as possible, this green-tea specialist is the go-to for American matcha fanatics. The flagship Brooklyn store, which doubles as a café, gallery and workshop, sells a range of Japanese homewares and tea-based delicacies, including its own range of matcha-infused chocolates.
Artéfact
Paris
One-of-a-kind tea blends are a speciality of this chic tea salon in the Marais – think green tea, yuzu and orange, or sage, green rooibos and verbena. Artéfact also has an extensive list of more classic teas from growers all over the world, plus unusual offerings such as the first white tea to be grown in the Pyrenees. The shop’s two floors regularly play host to art exhibitions and live music events.
Rare Tea Company
Online
As well as supplying fine tea to many of the world’s top restaurants and hotels, Henrietta Lovell has been a vocal campaigner for a more ethical supply chain in tea. She is the founder of Rare Charity, an initiative that seeks to improve access to education for people in tea-growing communities through the sale of ‘impact teas’ such Malawi Antlers, a rare white tea from Africa.
