Where is Yorkshire Tea made, and why is it called Yorkshire Tea?
Where is Yorkshire Tea made? Well, tea doesn’t grow in Yorkshire (obviously), so our tea leaves come from Africa and India… which might leave you wondering why it’s called Yorkshire Tea.
That’s an easy one – it’s because it’s a blend, and it’s traditional to give tea blends their own name. As Taylors of Harrogate, we’ve been creating tea blends in our North Yorkshire home since 1886. Blending is basically a recipe, a careful process of layering the complementary flavours of individual teas on top of each other to build a more complex flavour. A great blend has a taste profile that’s uniquely its own.
We blend teas from lots of different places
Yorkshire Tea is grown in more than 20 different places across Africa and India, then imported to Harrogate.
If you bought one of those 20 teas on its own, it’d probably be named after the place it was grown – Assam, Rwanda, Kenya, and so on. But you can’t do that with blends of teas from lots of places, because it’s a bit unwieldy.
Take ‘Russian Caravan’, a famous blend of oolong, keemun and lapsang souchong which made its way from China to Russia on 18th century camel caravans. It wasn’t very practical (or very catchy) to call it ‘Oolong Keemun Lapsang Souchong’, so instead it was named after its trade route.
And there’s a much more familiar example: English Breakfast tea. That started life as a handy mish-mash for tea traders – a way to bundle bits and bats from different places together and sell them easily. There was no guarantee of consistency, quality, origin or flavour, but the product still needed a name, and so ‘English Breakfast tea’ was born.
It caught on, too – and over time, the recipe did become more standardised and refined. Ultimately, it provided the inspiration for most of the black tea blends Brits drinks today. And the source of its name has passed into tea-making tradition too.
Like Yorkshire Tea, it’s a blend that’s both named after the place it was born, and the place it was created for.
And yes, we did in fact originally create Yorkshire Tea just for Yorkshire (more on that below). But over the years, a fondness for our brew spread well beyond those regional borders – which is why it’s now sold everywhere in the UK, and in lots of other countries too.
How tea gets from Africa and India to Harrogate
Our tea leaves grow on bushes in East Africa and Assam and are harvested when they’re ready. If you want to find out more, check out our complete guide to tea.
Once the leaves have had chance to lay out and turn brown (oxidise), they’re carefully packed and shipped across the sea.
They land in the UK (at Teesport!) and head to Harrogate, where our tea buyers double check the quality’s up to scratch.
It’s all blended together in just the right combination to make the classic Yorkshire Tea brew.
Before it heads out to shops (and you), the tea buyers triple-check every batch to make sure the flavour’s on point.
So, why are we called Yorkshire Tea?
If anyone ever asks you that question, you now have an answer! Yorkshire Tea is a blend, and blends are often named after the place they were born or the place they were originally created for – which in our case, was Yorkshire.
FAQs
Is Yorkshire Tea made for Yorkshire water?
Originally, yes. Tap water taste and quality used to vary a lot, so back in the day we often made unique blends for individual customers. Water pipes got more standardised over time, and in the 1970s we created a black tea blend that tasted great across the Yorkshire region. It just so happened to also taste great everywhere else - although if you’re in a hard water area, you should definitely give our Hard Water version a try.
Where is Yorkshire Tea HQ?
We live in Harrogate in North Yorkshire. That’s where we’ve always lived, ever since Taylors of Harrogate started as a family company back in 1886. Find out more about us and our story.
Do people from Yorkshire drink Yorkshire Tea?
We can’t speak for everyone! But we can say our tea has always been fairly well-liked round these parts. In the early years, many Yorkshire folk took a supply with them if they ever moved away. Over time, lots of people around the country were introduced to our brew – and that’s one of the biggest reasons so many people across the UK drink it today.
