Every year, we search for the finest teas from across the globe, always looking to improve our offering with each season. Over the last two years, we’ve strived to take our breakfast tea to the next level and it's available now on the JING website.
What makes a truly great breakfast tea?
It’s the tea that gets you up in the morning and nourishes you - almost a meal in itself. It needs to be strong, rousing, rich and full-bodied. But to be truly great, it needs to amaze you with the quality of flavour, with a true taste of the place where it is grown. We believe many breakfast teas lack flavour, soley offer a vaneer of strength and good colour.
We are obsessed the flavour of our teas - accordingly, we source teas which present the unique flavour of their origin with utter clarity. In considering the question, 'what is the ultimate breakfast tea?', we tasted every origin that produces rich, full-bodied teas. Out of all these, we had to choose pure Assam because it provides the perfect combination of strength, assertiveness and rich, malty flavour that is so satisfying in the morning. We believe that the addition of a smooth Ceylon or fragrant Darjeeling dilutes the clarity of the Assam-malt, making it less suited to its purpose.
Unfortunately, many breakfast and so-called ‘builders’ teas focus on the lowest denominations of colour and strength but compromise on flavour. Teas are added to the blend to give the veneer of ‘good’ colour. Many tea drinkers judge the quality of their favourite ‘builder’s tea’ on whether it has a satisfying deep-red colour after adding milk; however, this is not always a sign of ‘a good cup of tea’ - it may say so to your eyes but if the flavour is flat, cardboard-like, harsh, or simply not exciting, the good colour you see is merely superficial.
The colour should be a natural expression of the inherent quality of the tea. We do not need to add a tea to provide a better colour: the ruby red is characteristic of the best Assam, as is the red-gold after adding milk.
Sourcing the ultimate breakfast tea
So, having settled on Assam, how did we select the Assam teas that went into our ultimate JING Assam Breakfast?
We undertook the most extensive and uncompromising review of the top gardens in Assam, creating a shortlist of the best lots produced during the short second-flush in June. Rejecting any lots with the slightest hint of defect, accepting only those with the clearest expression of typical Assam flavour: each of the teas we selected were one of thousands. Typical of the best second-flush Assam, when cool, the infused tea turns to a thick copper cream.
We are delighted with the result and after all the work sourcing and tasting, we believe the new JING Assam Breakfast will satisfy connoisseurs and strong-tea-drinkers alike. In fact, we believe after a week of drinking JING Assam Breakfast you will never settle for anything else...
It infuses quickly, (we suggest 3 minutes) and you can enjoy it with milk or without.
