Speciality Teas from around the world

The mission of The Tea Master Ltd is to provide our customers with the finest loose, premium teas and accessories the world has to offer. For further details about The Tea Master Ltd, see our sister website : www.theteamaster.net

We at the The Tea Master LTD are true tea connoisseurs, that's why we encourage you to "Think outside the bag" and discover the world of quality loose leaf tea.

When you steep loose tea, it needs room for the leaves to absorb water and expand as they infuse. The water flows through the leaves and extracts a wide range of vitamins, minerals, flavours and aromas thus making a fantastic and memorable cup of tea.

Teabags are usually made from dust and fannings (smaller pieces of tea). When you steep tea in a teabag, its infusion is limited by the size of the teabag. For many years, the teabag industry has had to adapt tea to the teabag. By filling teabags with smaller particles of tea (rather than whole leaves), it has been cheap, easy and good enough for your average "milk and sugar" tea drinker, so it was successful. However that's all changing in the UK and people are now demanding a better cup of tea and a lot more choice.

Loose teas can help the environment too; consider the following:

• It takes 1 lb. of tea to produce 200 teabags
• 200 teabags require 200 staples, pieces of string and paper sheets (or, as is the case with many other tea companies, nylon or other synthetics)
• 200 foil or paper over-wrap sheets
• 200 teabags require roughly 30 seconds of machining per bag

This results in:

• Increased shipping weights
• Increased fuel consumption
• Increased natural resource consumption

When this number is multiplied by the hundreds of millions of teabags produced annually around the globe, the environmental affect is staggering. With loose tea:

• 1 lb produces 200 cups of tea with no added environmental cost.

Quality loose tea is relatively inexpensive, 100 grams of loose leaf tea will make you approximately 44 cups of tea. So if you pay £4.45 for 100 grams of top quality flavoured green tea, it will cost you around 10 pence per cup.  You will also find that you can infuse the same tea leaves multiple times making it even more cost effective.

Leaf tea can seem a little overwhelming at first, but we can supply you with everything you need to brew yourself a cup. There are many choices, from tea pots with built in infusers, reusable infusers that go directly in the cup or pot or we even supply self fill tea sacs which you simply pop the tea in and brew.  We have a fantastic range so check out our accessories page for everything you need.

Tea is good for you! The world's favourite drink, can help you maintain your health as part of a balanced diet and healthy, active lifestyle. Tea contains approximately 99% water. It is an important source of fluid and can count towards your daily intake of 8 cups of fluid. Both the Food Standards Agency and the British Dietetic Association advise that tea can help meeting daily fluid requirements.

Increasing evidence is highlighting the role antioxidants may have in protecting against certain conditions such as heart disease, stroke and cancers. It has been proposed that the mechanisms leading to these diseases may be promoted by free radicals and that antioxidants may oppose the action of these molecules. In addition to the well known antioxidants such as Vitamins C and E, there is growing research demonstrating the potentially beneficial effects of plant-derived antioxidants, polyphenols, found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, cereals and drinks such as tea and red wine. It is well known that fruit and vegetables are good sources of antioxidants, however what is less well known is the presence of antioxidants in tea. The major group of antioxidants in tea are flavonoids that appear to be digested, absorbed and metabolised by the body. So as well as eating more fruit and vegetables, antioxidant intake can be topped up by drinking more tea, helping to promote overall health and well-being.

Freshness is of paramount importance so our teas are vacuum packaged and sealed before they leave for the UK to lock in garden freshness and minimise oxygen exposure from garden to cup thus guaranteeing maximum flavour.

When you buy tea from The Tea Master you are buying quality tea from the top 10% of its growing region. We also ensure that our tea comes from growers with excellent track records of fair treatment for all workers, many of which are FAIRTRADE certified and members of the ETHICAL TEA PARTNERSHIP (ETP).