Types of Tea

Black Tea Blends. Breakfasts and all

Besides Russian Caravan Tea, there is another tea blend, whose taste does not depend much on the producer — Breakfast Tea (strong, invigorative tea, with saturated taste, and simple, bright flavor). All other tea blends — even if by chance they have the same name — are different from company to company…

	Ahmad English Breakfast Tea.

The word ‘Breakfast’ appears in names of different tea blends quite often — I can at once recall at least English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast, Indian Breakfast, and Ceylon Breakfast of various trade marks. One can meet queerer breakfast teas — like China Breakfast or Japan Breakfast — but this is already the triumph of marketing over common sense — thus, I shall exclude them from consideration.

The name of the tea blend unambiguously defines its destination — but it does not mean that tea called, for example, English Breakfast Tea, cannot be drunk at lunch or in the evening. Of course it can. Moreover, many tea lovers like the strength of breakfast teas so much that they drink it all the time — and get lots of pleasure.

This very maximal strength is the main quality of a breakfast tea. Strength of tea means that there is a lot of caffeine in it, this, in its turn, results in the invigorating qualities of the drink. Interacting with tannin, tea caffeine forms caffeine tannate, a compound of tannic acid which enters our organism when we drink tea. This tannate acts much milder than pure caffeine — that is why people who are used to coffee may simply not notice the invigorating quality of tea.

It is quite easy to compose a blend which will make a strong brew. You just need broken (or CTC) Ceylon or Kenyan teas — these teas brew the strongest. However, such an ‘optimized by strength’ drink will hardly have a good taste — let alone good flavor. That is why strong broken-leaf teas are combined with more precious Indian or mountainous Ceylon teas.

Ideally, the result of such mixture must be a strong tea with saturated taste and plain but pleasant flavor. Such tea is good for washing down morning sandwiches — even if they are with stinky (or ‘evil-smelling’) cheese. Breakfast tea goes well with sugar, and lemon, and… — anything which can turn tea into energy drink suitable for mornings.

Despite their fundamental similarity, all abovementioned breakfast teas have their own nuances. Indian and Ceylon Breakfast are simply composed of different combinations of Indian and Ceylon teas correspondingly. Such ‘territorial purity’ of a blend does not so much determine the taste; it is mostly a marketing trick — though, a rather successful one.

Irish Breakfast is a bit more complex. It is often made just very-very strong, exploiting a widespread opinion that the Irish are simple and rude people, who like everything well-defined and cannot stand half measures. Accordingly, their tea must be the same way, so that it would hold a spoon put into it. Even such a respectable company as Twinings, packs undistinguished CTC-tea into boxes labeled Irish Breakfast Tea. The second variant of Irish Breakfast Tea is a tea sprinkled with whiskey. I like this variant much more — whiskey does not tell much upon taste or flavor of the tea, but it is nice to think about.

Well, of course, the most widespread Breakfast tea is English Breakfast Tea — in a more or less decent supermarket you will find at least ten different teas under this name. At the same time, there are no set standards or rules for English Breakfast blending — so, it is rather difficult to say what you will find in every particular cup of tea. It is quite evident that the tea will be strong, all the rest — who knows?

Do not consider it as a promo, but I find that the best Breakfast tea available in Russia is Ahmad English Breakfast Tea — blend of Kenyan CTC-tea and Ceylon and Indian broken-leaf tea. I start every morning with a big mug of this tea with two teaspoonfuls of sugar and a slice of lemon (though, during the day and in the evening, I normally do not add either sugar or lemon into tea).

Russian Caravan Tea (which was described in the previous article) and English Breakfast Tea — are the only two tea blends, one may say, whose tastes do not depend much on the producer. The matters with other tea blends stand differently.

	Twinings blends: Traditional Afternoon Tea and English Breakfast Tea.

The point is that any respectable tea producer, when forming a range of drinks, wants to offer something special, some zest, along with traditional and approved teas — mostly, tea blends play the role of such specialty.

Thus, for example, one of Twining’s special tea blends is Prince of Wales Tea. Its composition and taste is close to Russian Caravan tea — the blend includes Chinese Keemun tea, which adds typical dryish notes to the blend. Prince of Wales Tea is packed in black tin boxes — and this ‘blackness’ has a historical reason. The First Prince of Wales in English history was Edward, son of Edward III. This very Edward, son of Edward III, was called the ‘Black Prince’ — after the color of his armor. The inscription on the box usually says that this tea is good with milk. You may try, if you want. I prefer it plain.

Ahmad has two very interesting blends in its assortment: Ahmad Royal Blend Tea and Ahmad English Afternoon Tea. Both of them contain small amounts of bergamot — so little that it is difficult to place them among flavored teas, but still noticeable, which gives tea a very nice nuance.

Harrods Company, which produces and sells various nice food gifts (cookies, candies, and other sumptuously gift-wrapped delicious thingies), does not worry too much about names and simply sells its tea blends under numbers. Quality of these blends can be very high. Thus, for example, for its 150^th anniversary, the company developed a special tea blend Harrods No.49 — an incredible mixture of Indian and Ceylon teas, very simple, at first glance, and very tasty, if you drink it more attentively.

Fortnum & Mason — another English company, specializing in luxury goods — presents many tea blends with beautiful names. Among them Queen Anna Tea, Royal Blend, etc. — but all of them are not especially good. A truly good blend, Fountain Blend Tea, one may try only at Fortnum & Mason Patio Restaurant and Fortnum & Mason Fountain Restaurant on Piccadilly, London.

Of course, I can write much about special tea blends of different companies, but I’ll restrain myself and close this topic. In the next article I shall tell you about flavored teas — or rather about the most outstanding representatives of this category.

Denis Shumakov