Company Profile: Northern Tea Company

Northern Tea Merchants is a tea company that is based in Derbyshire. It's a really wonderful company, and I have been very lucky that the (tea) world's loveliest man, James, has spared some time to answer some questions for me so that I can write this company profile.

Northern Tea Merchants sell high quality teas that are both loose and in teabags. And for the coffee lovers out there, they sell coffee too!

I have been very lucky to try some of their teas and they are delicious. I have already reviewed their chocolate tea  and will be reviewing others at a later date. It was a totally luxurious tea that I really enjoyed and gave me a wonderful chocolate kick that a girl needs from time to time!

Brian and James's enthusiasm, and their very evident passion for tea, come through clearly when you speak to them. This isn't just a job, it's in their blood. It's very nice to meet people who not only love tea, but have a respect for it too. 

Their customer base is varied. They sell to the Co-op right up to Harrods food hall, via Sainsbury's and Tesco's. From the chat's I've had with James, their customers are loyal to them and many have been going to the Northern Tea Merchants for decades - and I can understand why.

Aside from their regular customers, Northern Tea Merchants also sell into the trade, and supply hotel's and cafe's as well as some of the largest catering organisations with their blends of tea. 

Northern Tea Merchants take their tea very seriously and test every batch of tea and coffee before it's sold. It's also interesting to note that they were one of the very first tea companies within the UK to sell their tea in the form of teabags. 

They have also been part of the Fairtrade scheme since the 1980's and also are part of the Rainforest Alliance Sustainable Coffee Programme. This is a tea company that stay true to the ethical principles of fairtrade tea and coffee, and that in itself is something to be proud of.

Earlier this week James kindly answered some questions that I could add to the profile. Here is what I asked, and here are his answers.

1. When was the Northern Tea Merchants established and why?

 Northern Tea Merchants was actually the second generation business name of my family’s involvement in the Tea trade. The history is this… In 1926, my grandfather, Albert Pogson, took a job with the Ceylon Tea Growers association on Meadow Lane in Nottingham, where he worked until 1936. In 1936, he moved to Chesterfield, and established his own door-to-door and wholesale tea business called the Spire Tea Company. My father worked for him until 1959, when he decided to do the same thing and open his own tea business, this time selling the new-fangled tea bag (Northern Tea Merchants were one of the first companies in the UK to sell tea bags) to grocers and also door-to door. The huge growth in the popularity of the tea bags enabled my father to expand his business very successfully, and it became a wholesale orientated manufacturing business, which supplied hundreds of cafes, restaurants, hotels, corner shops (there were plenty of corner shops in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s), and in 1982 (the year I started senior school), my father made the significant decision to become involved with Traidcraft and Oxfam and we commenced contract packing work for them, some of which we still hold today in spite of their policy to have their products packed at origin. I joined the business in 1988 and worked as a Van Driver, Warehouseman, Packer, Shop Operative etc. etc. etc. until in 1998 I became Operations Manager which allowed me to start steering the business in directions I saw that would improve our acumen and secure the business’ future. We become Northern Tea Merchants Ltd in 2007, and amongst our list of satisfied customers, we now supply Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, the Co-Op and Harrods as well as maintaining our strong presence in the wholesale market, with many of my Father’s (and even grandpa’s in some cases!) customers still buying from us after many years. The reason? Because we sell good quality. Simply that! 

 2. What are your personal favourite blends? 

 At home, I drink our Gourmet Classic Tea as a day-to-day cuppa, although I always have some Ti Quan Yin Green Tea, some Keemun Peony Black Tea, some whole Chamomile Flowers and some Kenya Blue Mountain coffee beans in my cupboard for when I fancy a change.

3. What do you think makes for a good tea?

 Easy. There is a direct correlation (usually) between the cost of a tea and its quality. That’s why if you buy some of the bloody awful ‘Value’ Tea bags that usually retail for about 30p for 80 tea bags, they taste like cement water, and if you spend £2.00 or thereabouts on a box of better quality tea bags, they are much more likely to appease your palate! HOWEVER, please accept that I’m not being a tea snob. The cost of tea affects so many people down the line in the production of said tea – i.e. the Tea Pickers, the workers in the factory at origin that turns the green picked leaf into the black leaf that we all use in our tea bags, the shippers, the humble tea merchant (!), and I suppose that what I’m saying is IT PAYS TO BUY GOOD TEA!

4. What do you think makes a bad tea?

Cheap Tea, which has a lack of character and flavour, poor colour, unpleasant characteristics such as a burnt or toasty flavour, dull flavour notes like dirty water… All of these attributes are easy to discern by anyone. As a rule, we are a nation of good quality tea drinkers, and the cheaper alternatives are all retail discount driven.

5. What is your general opinion of high street blends?

I admire the high street blends for their consistency. Imagine being in the situation where you are selling over 70 tonnes of tea per day (approx. what Tetley (the market leader in the UK) are producing for the UK every day). There is only a finite amount of good tea available at origin, and bids for it are often hotly contested. The laws of supply and demand, plus the fact that a lot of the world’s tea is auctioned and so has no real fixed price, weather conditions at origin plus new legislation within Europe that deals with MRL’s (pesticide residue) and bacterial counts makes the buyers job very difficult indeed to provide a consistent blend every day and I take of my hat to the skill of some of these fellows who are occasionally charged with the job of making a silk purse out of teas that are sometimes only good enough to make a sow’s ear. I am lucky in that we don’t have to buy every day, and so I can seek out good teas over time and I hope you agree that the quality of my teas is that bit better than you can get on the high street. If my business were to grow in size, I may not be in that enviable position of being able to wait for the right lots of tea to come along, and so would have to wear my accountant’s hat, rather than my Tea Merchant’s hat to compose my blends, with the corresponding drop in quality that this would give.

6. How do you develop new blends?

By experimentation, and having developed my palate memory (i.e. I can remember what teas taste like). I blend for flavour, strength, character and colour. Usually flavour and strength are provided by North Indian Teas (Assams), colour is added to blends by using teas from the East of the Rift Valley in Kenya, and character comes from teas from the beautiful island of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). This list is not exclusive, and other origins (e.g. Rwanda) have their own characteristics that can alter or improve a blend. I suppose the concise version of what I have just written is – by practice and good memory!

I'd like to say a huge thanks for James for taking the time to answer my questions - and indepth, too!

For more information on Northern Tea Merchants then please click here.