We have selected a few teas from the Tregothnan Estate which we are sure you will love. They make original gifts.

Tregothnan Estate

For those of you that love tea as much as we do, you will know that tea is a type of Camellia – the Camellia sinensis. In the mid-nineties, the gardeners at Tregothnan suspected that because of the success of ornamental Camellia at Tregothnan, that the tea variety might also grow successfully in Tregothnan’s unique environment. Much research was undertaken including trips to tea regions around the world such as Darjeeling in India and Japan to understand more about the processes and pitfalls of growing and harvesting the precious leaves. Head Gardener, Jonathon Jones, completed a Nuffield Scholarship on the subject and then in 1999 the very first British tea bushes were planted.

The kitchen garden site was specified as the best place to trial this tricky crop – one side protected by the high wall of the ancient garden, the other side protected by the thick shrubby characteristics of Tregothnan’s Manuka bushes. After a few false starts, (early spring storms uprooted the first baby bushes and swept them up and over the garden wall!) the first 300 bushes took root in the Kitchen Garden. Once past the first difficult few years, tea production becomes a lot easier, but it was soon clear that many more bushes would be needed for a credible tea business – the first harvest in 2005 yielded just 28 grams of tea! The world’s first true English tea was heralded as the ‘new Darjeeling’.

Twenty years later and we have learnt a great deal since those early days of tea production. Now up to 20,000 tea bushes are planted every year, in new tea garden areas across the wider estate in Cornwall. Out of 1,000 acres, only 150 meet these criteria, making this a small player on the global tea market. To counter limitations of scale, Tregothnan is positioned as a luxury tea brand.