Why Tea Tastes Worse Abroad (And What To Do About It)

The breakfast room in Marrakech was lovely. Warm light, good pastries, the smell of something spiced drifting in from somewhere. I sat down, ordered tea, and waited.

What arrived was pale and lukewarm. The kind of cup that makes you briefly consider coffee, which at least has the decency to be bad in a predictable way.

It wasn't the first time. Years of travelling for work, buying tea for a living, and I still can't reliably get a decent cup in a hotel abroad. The reason, once you understand how tea is bought and blended, is fairly straightforward.

Tea in hotel food service is bought on volume and price. A hotel in Morocco, France, or Florida isn't sourcing for a British palate. Most of their guests drink tea without milk, so a lighter blend makes perfect sense. Less leaf in the bag, more delicate, nothing that would taste harsh on its own. In the States, many blends are developed specifically for iced tea brewing, which does nothing for you when you want something big and bold at breakfast. For most guests in both places, the tea works perfectly well. For us, it just doesn't.

The reason it doesn't comes down to milk. British tea is strong by design, built to carry it. The blends that shaped the UK tea market lean heavily on African teas, Kenyan and Rwandan mostly, chosen for their brightness and strength. They're made to punch through milk and still taste like something. Hotel tea abroad isn't built for that at all. It's built for guests who drink it black, or barely brewed, or with a slice of lemon. The leaf is lighter, the bag thinner, and no amount of squeezing it against the side of the cup will rescue it.

Our English breakfast blends take that principle further still. The Assams we use bring a depth of body that most UK blends, let alone overseas ones, simply don't have. Malty, full, the kind of cup that actually improves with milk rather than just tolerating it.

Granny Spoon once gave me a fine bone china mug as a gift. Lovely thing. It took me a while to realise it wasn't really for me. She just wanted a proper cup waiting when she visited. Tea is like that for a lot of people, not just a drink but a ritual with specific requirements, and those requirements don't pack themselves.

Which is why we made a travel tea tin. We started noticing customers sending us pictures of Two Spoons tea on holiday, on beaches, at kitchen tables in foreign rentals, balanced on hotel windowsills. It seemed only right to give them something to carry it in properly. It holds up to fifteen bags, seals well, and fits in a wash bag without any negotiation. I once managed fifteen Bucks Blend in a single tin. I packed them neatly.

The next trip is coming. Pack accordingly.

[Browse our English breakfast teas and travel tea tin at twospoons.co.uk]