Switch Up Your Tea

Loose leaf tea offers a more customisable high-quality and environmentally friendly tea drinking experience

Making a cup of tea is a beautifully simple thing that billions of people do every day, sometimes several times over. To celebrate National Tea Day this year, we want to let you know how to really make the most of it, every time you put the kettle on.

Read on for four simple tips to tea-drinking that really do make a difference – whether it’s for the planet, the people who make it... or you, the drinker!

1. Choose Single Garden Teas 
 
Single gardens teas are at the heart of JING and were the inspiration for our founder to start the company.

“When it comes to producing and consuming food and drink, we need to change our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the environment.” – Ed Eisler

Whether food or drink, you might know that ‘single origin’ products are traceable to one place and tend to typify the taste of that location. Single garden teas take the concept a step further, as no one grower or garden is the same either. A single garden tea is a singular tea. You won’t find another one like it. It’s comparable to choosing a wine from one estate, or whiskey from a certain distillery.

Mr Yongs Red Dragon Garden in Xinmeng Yunnan China is run jointly as a cooperative with the workers

Single garden teas celebrate individuality – of the people, cultures, and natural resources that produce them.

Around the world, tea farmers believe an appreciation of origin is the most sustainable way to add value to their industry. By choosing single garden teas you help producers, individual origins, and their communities to thrive.

Discover Single garden Teas

Tom our Head of Tea with our Tea Master Mr Yong Luo our Red Dragon black tea in Yunnan China

Our Red Dragon has a multi-layered infusion with flavour highlights of lychee, raspberry and malt, with hints of milk chocolate in the finish

2. Choose Loose Leaf 
 
We think that loose leaf tea is a win-win-win for drinkers, producers, and the planet and with good reason.

Loose leaf is the best format in which to enjoy the best tasting cup, and it gives you access to a vast choice of the world’s finest single garden teas. These unique teas wow the senses by expressing the individuality of the people, culture and natural resources that made them. They are quite different from mass-produced blended teas that are created for consistency not character. The flavour of a single garden tea is simply the flavour of the tea garden it comes from – carefully cultivated by a tea master.

Watch to discover what Tom Our Head of Tea looks for when selecting a high quality loose leaf tea.

You won’t find a lot of loose leaf choices in tea bags. As the leaf needs to be cut and processed into fannings to fit into this format – once in a tea bag you lose all the beautiful aromas and tastes.

Finally, loose leaf tea is simply better for the environment, as it requires less packaging, plastic or plastic alternatives used in tea bags.

Explore Loose Leaf

A view over Organic Certified Da Hei Garden in Yunnan, China where our Organic White Peony and Organic Yunnan Gold is grown

3. Choose Organic 
 
We’re proud of the fact that 70% of our teas are organic or have our own ‘Made Without Pesticides’ stamp on them, and that we are on track to reach our 80% goal to make all of them this way. While more costly and with a smaller yield, organic farming has many benefits for the future of the tea industry by:

• Balancing ecosystems and protecting biodiversity
• Ensuring healthy soils
• Building resilience of the tea bushes to the effects of climate change
• Minimising exposure of land, wildlife, producers to agrochemicals promoting safer, healthier working conditions for the tea producing communities

Not forgetting flavour, as organic teas really do taste better, capturing the freshness and flavours of the gardens from where they are grown. It’s also better for you as you're drinking less pesticides after all.

Try Our Oganic Teas

Remember to only boil as much water as you need

4. Boil less water 
 
Last October, the UK Tea and Infusions Association (UKTIA) launched the Smart Boil campaign following a study into the waste of electricity – and corresponding greenhouse emissions – resulting from overfilling our kettles. Here are the stats:

• Exactly 2,649,792 kWh of electricity is wasted each day
• Creating 618 tCO2e greenhouse gas emissions
• While adding £900,900 a day overall to the nation’s energy bill

Please help support the wider effort to reduce carbon emissions by only boiling the water you need. With our bills only going up, it’s definitely something to bear in mind to keep your costs down too.

It’s Time to Challenge Tradition 
 
Small changes every day can have the best long-lasting effects!

We’re all creatures of habit, but there’s a whole wonderful world of tea out there to try. It’s what we at JING are dedicated to, after all. Whether it’s discovering a new single garden tea type like puerh or switching to quality driven, organic teas, these are the best small changes we can make as consumers.

Our Organic Sencha originates in the mountains of west Shizuoka where spring picking has just begun. Experience deliciously refreshing flavours of intense vegetal sweetness and savoury umami

Overall, these switches won’t just help the planet and the tea producers. The tea will taste more delicious, and it’ll be better for you too. There’s no better time to challenge tradition – it’s easy as popping the kettle on.