Tea & Coffee at Booths

Tea & Coffee

Our founder Edwin Henry Booth started as a tea dealer and travelled often in search of excellent tea and coffee. His expertise has been passed on through generations of the family and we have always blended our tea and roasted our coffee in-house. When we taste our tea and coffee, we still weigh the samples using a sixpence, as it was done during original tastings in India. Woe betide anyone who loses the sixpence!

Our tea

We taste, blend and pack 17 types of leaf tea. Some, like our Ceylon OP, come from a single tea garden, while blends like our Darjeeling, which is a favourite of Graham Booth, are made to specifications handed down through the family. Our teas are carefully packaged in small batches as soon as they are blended to ensure that they stay fresh down to the last cup. You can also taste our tea at our in-store restaurants, cafes and tea shops.

We take our responsibilities as buyers very seriously and we’re a member of the Ethical Tea Partnership, which aims to support a socially just and environmentally sustainable tea industry.

Storage: Always store in a cool dark air tight container. Traditionally a tea caddy – recently re-introduced at Booths

Preparation: Put a teaspoon of tea per person in the pot – plus one for the pot. Brew for 4 minutes for black tea, 2-3 minutes for green tea and serve in a warm cup.

Our coffee

Our in-house coffee team are bean fiends who sort, blend and hand-roast our coffee in small batches and pack them the same day for a really fresh taste. Our 15 whole-bean coffees include our Finest & Best house blend, which has acidity from Kenya, sweetness from India and a little gaminess from Ethiopia, and Monsoon Malabar, which is picked during the rainy season and dried by Indian monsoon winds for a smooth, velvety character. We also roast and grind a selection of eight coffees, and our in-store coffee grinders, where you can grind our whole bean blends, produce a wonderful aroma – as do the cafetieres of our coffee we serve in our cafes and restaurants.

A number of our coffees are Rain Forest Alliance certified, and all of them are sourced from suppliers who trade ethically.

Storage: Once ground your coffee should be kept in a cool, dark, dry container that is airtight.

Preparation: Use a round dessertspoon of coffee per cup, pour fresh, just off the boil water over and break the surface of the water by giving it a stir. Brew for 3 to 4 minutes.