Rooted In History - Interview With Brut Tea Founders 🍵

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Have you ever come across a tea token? We expect not, as what is in front of you today is the first in the UK! But, Gemma, what is a tea token we hear you ask. Well, we have the brut tea team to dig deep into this and to answer all your questions. Over the past few years, tea has become an absolute staple in the alcohol-free world including Kombucha’s, smoky non-alc spirits and dashes of strong tea to cocktails to add sophistication, depth and complexity. Today, you can enjoy your tea token in whatever way suits you best or stock up at bruttea.com to continue the experimentation! Without further ado.

Q: Welcome for the first ever time to a JOMO Box - we are so excited to have you in the box today to showcase something completely innovative. Can we start with an introduction to brut tea? Sure! Brut Tea is bringing you the UK’s first ever tea token - single origin, whole leaf tea that’s pressed into the shape of a small token. This lets you enjoy great taste that is easily portable, without the plastics & paper found in tea bags. Our teas are artisan, hand crafted by award-winning tea masters in Yunnan. We’re especially proud to share we source all our teas ourselves directly from tea farms and take a lot of care in visiting & curating them. In fact, we take it so seriously we’ve even spent days living at the tea farms we have chosen to work with!

Q: When launching your business, why did you have such an infinity to tea? Whilst I established my career as a tech entrepreneur, I studied biochemistry at uni & am also a qualified wine sommelier. Early this year, a particularly bad bout of food poisoning forced me to give up wine for weeks. As Joyce foraged through our home pantry in search of a remedy to soothe my aching stomach. she came across a cake of cooked Pu’er tea which had been woefully neglected for years. Incredibly, this tea serves as a soothing balm to my gut, putting to rest the many aches I had suffered from for days, and helped nurse my body back to good shape again. Intrigued, I put the skills I had acquired in my past life as a biochemist to conduct a thorough research on teas, and discovered the hugely beneficial, anti-oxidant effects tea polyphenols have on the body. At the same time, Joyce started livestreaming on TikTok (where she used to work as a product manager) about teas and found our story resonated with people from all ages and walks of life. From there, Brut Tea was born. In our own lives, Brut Tea serves a really important purpose - a commitment to look after our bodies by drinking less alcohol and more tea, and a continual journey to rediscover our own roots as a product of the East & the West.

Q: Artisanal tea tokens. What exactly is a tea token and how did you come up with this idea? How incredibly innovative. Actually, the origin of the tea token is rooted in history. For centuries, tea was pressed into 357g cakes for easy transport along the Ancient Tea Horse Road. Being made from high-quality leaves, the pressing also helped these teas to age. As it turns out, Yunnan, where our teas come from, was the epicenter of this route. We know people in London lead busy lives, so we decided to miniaturise these tea cakes by turning them into tea tokens that can be easily enjoyed by everybody.

Q: Can you set the scene for us. You have your tea token in front of you. Where are you, what is your setting and how are we enjoying it? To be honest, we find brewing and drinking our tea tokens so fun and easy that we drink it everywhere now! Our favourite way to enjoy it is with a group of friends visiting us at our home in Greenwich. We usually brew using the traditional Gongfu style of brewing with a porcelain tea set as we catch up. This Summer, we also served the teas as a cold brew at picnics and barbecues, and they went down really nicely as a healthy thirsty quencher. Most recently, we brought some tea tokens with us when we were travelling, and brewed them in a mug after heavy meals outside - they were a great digestif.

Q: Have you ever used brut tea in a cocktail? If so, can you share the recipe with us? Yes, absolutely! Our teas have a subtle and delicate flavour, but if you leave it in for longer you can create a stronger brew that’s perfect for cocktails. Our favourite is Coconut Iced Pu’er. For this recipe, you will need some Pu’er Fermented Black Tea (launching later this year)! It’s quite special because this tea goes through the process of fermentation, giving it a dark, complex taste and a silky smooth mouthfeel.

Here’s how you make it:

• Add plenty of ice to a glass
• Brew 120ml of Pu’er Fermented Black Tea and let it chill
• Fill a glass with 180ml coconut water, add the tea and some syrup to taste.

Keep an eye on JOMO Club socials with the full ‘how to’ video.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the two teas. What tea is used and what are the flavour profiles for both? Absolutely. The Yunnan Black Tea is grown on sun-kissed mountain slopes with an elevation of 2060m, and we only pick leaves from ancient trees over a hundred years old. As a result, our black tea possesses an 100% natural, subtle sweetness. When brewed correctly, you’ll pick up aromas of honey, ginger and dates. The Pu’er Green Tea is not like your average green tea - so if you’ve tried the green tea and didn’t like it in the past, be in for a surprise! It’s grown from Yunnan’s own large-leaf varietal of tea trees, giving it a bigger, rounder mouthfeel. On the palate, you’ll pick up slightly sweet and vegetal notes reminiscent of honeydew melon, sugarcane and spring pea.

Q: Are there any nutritional benefits to tea we should know? Tea’s been used as a medicine since time immemorial. As early as the 6th century, Zen monks in China used tea as a stimulant to help them focus during long meditation sessions. Fast forward to modern times, there’s been an explosion of scientific literature supporting the positive nutritional benefits of tea. To name just a couple, tea polyphenols such as EGCG, found in Pu’er green tea, have been shown to exert anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties whilst theaflavins, like those in Yunnan black tea, have the potential to lower blood cholesterol. My favourite one through is L-theanine - found in all types of tea, but especially green tea - it’s an amino acid that has an anxiolytic effect and can also modulate the uptake of caffeine, giving tea drinkers a sense of calm, quiet focus without jitters or crashes. I’ve found myself feeling more at peace and productive when working with a cup of tea in my hand.

Q: Thank you so much for bringing your beautiful product to JOMO today. For those that loved it and want to stock up or want to try your other tea - where can we find you? Find us at www.bruttea.com! We will also be launching at various retail outlets in Q4 this year, so look our for updates by following our Instagram @brut.tea

You can get 10% off when shopping on our website by entering discount code JOMOFRIENDS at checkout!