Yorkshire Tea shuts down troll in hilarious online spat over foreign growing

Yorkshire Tea has been inundated with praise after the firm shut down a troll online who branded the company 'disgusting' - for not growing its tea in Yorkshire.

By The Newsroom Thursday, 8th February 2018, 9:04 pm Updated Thursday, 8th February 2018, 9:20 pm

Yorkshire Tea

A Tweet sent to the Yorkshire Tea account said 'WHERE IS YOUR TEA GROWN? @YorkshireTea'

Once Yorkshire Tea explained that the brews are cultivated in Africa and India, Twitter user @FleetwoodTerryO replied: "DISGRACEFUL. WHY CALL IT YORKSHIRE TEA IF ITS NOT GROWN IN YORKSHIRE. WONT BE BUYING FROM YOU AGAIN"

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Another comment added "Brexit means Brexit" to which FleetwoodTerryO replied "bang on"

As the firm explained online, Yorkshire Tea is grown in more than 20 different places across Africa and India, then imported to Harrogate and blended.

So why is it called Yorkshire Tea?

As Yorkshire Tea put it "If you drank one of those 20 teas on its own, it would typically be described in terms of its origin – Assam tea, for example, or Rwandan tea, Kenyan tea and so on.

"But blends from multiple origins need to be named more creatively. Take 'Russian Caravan', for example – 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.

"In Britain, there's a more familiar example: English Breakfast.

"English Breakfast tea was a mongrel. When tea traders needed to sell the last scraps of their various teas from around the world, they mixed them all together and sold them as a blend. There was no guarantee of consistency, quality, origin or flavour – but the product still needed a name. So it became the defining example of a blend named after the place it was created, and the market it was created for.

"English Breakfast tea caught on – and its composition became a little 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.

"As Taylors of Harrogate, we've been creating tea blends in our North Yorkshire home since 1886. It's this blending that defines the art of the tea-maker. It’s a careful process which layers the complimentary flavours of individual teas on top of each other to build a more complex flavour, and a great blend can achieve a balance and depth which single origin teas can't, along with a taste profile which is uniquely its own.

"Most people now know the story behind it, but occasionally someone will pick up that box and wonder why it's called 'Yorkshire Tea'. So if anyone ever asks you that same question, you now have an answer: it's a blend of teas, and blends are often named after the place they were born. Just like English Breakfast."