I believe The Devotea http://www.the-devotea.com is starting his UK website very shortly. Some pretty unusual and interesting blends there – well worth a look at the Australian site even if it’s just for his sense of humour!

hiphopteashop said:
@Xavier
I noticed that, I’m quite excited. I’ll check out the Australian site a bit more now in preperation…

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@peter and I’ve sipped our way through most of his teas, and they make for a fine cuppa. I think @thedevotea‘s blends are better than any I’ve encountered in tins. Probably because he uses a lot of pretty good Darjeeling in many of them.
As to loose leaf tea in good ol’ England – bummer! Wish more Brits drank loose leaf tea. Do you know the wonderful Henrietta Lovell of Rare Tea Company? She’s on a crusade to bring more loose leaf tea to the masses. I’ve never tried her company’s teas – but I adore the lady. She’s made lots of interesting tea vids, I’ll put some up if you haven’t seen them yet. If I think of more companies, I’ll add them later.

I saw this discussion, jumped on to blow my own trumpet and found the orchestra were already warming up. Great to see.
We should launch in the UK in May. As our distributors source all of their raw products locally or internationally – i.e. we don’t actually send the tea to the UK, it’s blended under licence – our distributor is likely to start with about 5 or 6 of our blends, not the whole set.
Some of the blends are actually quite tricky – for example the process of drying oranges for the Lady Devotea blend – so until I personally get to the UK in August September to conduct some in-house training some are not even possible.
And Lady Devotea (the Lady this time, not the tea) and I are likely to be in Brighton soaking up some history on the afternoon and evening of 30/9/2012 if you want to grab some tea loving friends, Simon, and we can have a cuppa.

Whoops, to correct myself above, Launching in THE US in May and the UK in June

Hey Simon – I run a UK tea company! http://www.minrivertea.com – selling a range of pure loose-leaf Chinese teas. Take a look and just get in touch if anything takes your fancy.

Chris

Simon, I’d endorse Chris at Min River Teas. His teas are all entirely excellent in my experience

I endorse @minrivertea too. I haven’t actually tried his teas but he’s a smart and genuinely nice person to chat to.

said:
Nice one guys I’ll do that. Looks like @minrivertea is going to be getting an order from me in the near future…

cool! Everything’s good, but I’m on a mission to get people hooked on the Old Iron. Unfortunate name, but it’s a really nice tea halfway between a red and green oolong. Or, if you like green oolongs, got fresh 2012 Tie Guan Yin (Iron Buddha) coming in about a week, and a stunning Dan Cong oolong too.

Brighton boy!! Whereabouts? Spent 6 years there previously but only remember 3 of them 🙂

haha, yep – I lived on Clifton Terrace for a while, and remember pushing my bike up that hill! All the best, Chris

..and the tea is in the post. Hope you enjoy it and let me know your thoughts!

Ah, Brighton!

@hiphopteashop and @minrivertea – I fondly remember when we opened up the train line to Brighton back in ’41. What a wonderful time that was, later on, I used to stay at the Grand Hotel when it was built. Lovely times. 

Kent Tea and Coffee ( http://www.tea-and-coffee.com/ ) are quite good. I don’t know whether they’re on here or not though. They have quite a wide selection so I imagine it might be a bit hit or miss on certain teas, but I’ve been pretty happy with everything I’ve gotten from them so far

*@robmarch @hiphopteashop – that’s a very nice looking web site they have. Love the theme. And a special page for Russian customers…Interesting. Wonder if they are big on UK (imported)teas?