About Us
My tea story
With a dry throat I tentatively accepted the cardboard cup.
Suspect very green leaves were curled at the bottom, suspended seemed to dance in a mocking fashion for me.
The thirst was overwhelming, I’d accepted that this was not going to be the best experience, but I’d lived through drinking London water so surely I could do this…
Sniffing the leaf water, OK not too overwhelming.
Sipping the liquid.
Wait where were the drying bitter notes I’d expected and experienced before?
A second more eager mouthful and the sweet smooth liquor enveloped my tastebuds. I did savour this.
Turning to my cousin in awe “what is this?”
Through her laughter, she confirmed my initial suspicions that it was indeed green tea.
The following day I found myself in a tiny tea shop in deepest darkest China with my bemused cousin and Aunt.
Walls lined with shelves bursting with teas, huge discs of pressed tea, simply tea immersion.
Here we were treated to so many different teas, all prepared in what seemed to be tiny tea ware (which later I learned was the Chinese style of preparing tea).
Well let’s just say I walked out of that shop with 2.5kg of green and oolong teas.
Did I mention I was hooked?
Fast forward less time than anticipated and I was running low on tea.
Living in Aberdeen, surely there was somewhere to replenish my newly discovered life source?
My wanderings drew a blank sadly, let’s just say I was told bluntly that the tea I had enjoyed earlier that day did not exist! Not helpful.
Turning to what was the wild west of tea sourcing, the internet in 2006.
What teas turned up, and were promptly ditched sometimes (the practice of adding ink to tea leaves so the tea was dark?) was quite a journey.
Thankfully I now have trusted sources, and strong relationships with my wonderful tea producers and tea friends.
This means you do not have to do this experimentation, be safe in the knowledge that I refuse to let you go through for example ink infused tea. Yes this used to be a practice to make tea seem artificially and most importantly cheaply dark.
Not to worry that ink tea was binned after my first infusion, it wasn’t even safe to feed to plants!
My name is Donna and today, I aim to transform your tea experience.
We are not a supplier of dusty bland tea bags.
We do not mass supply or produce.
We do not offer hundreds of teas or blends.
Everything we offer is chosen carefully; we care about our suppliers, and our blends.
We make sure our tea brings the best experience to you.
Why would you part with your hard-earned money for anything less than the best?
You will not find tea of this calibre in your corner shop (unless you live around the corner from Refillosophy, Aberdeen).
All our blends are carefully created and tested, then tweaked and retested until perfected. These recipes are a labour of love; there is no quick way to develop a well-balanced blend that takes you on a journey from the start to the end of each sip.
We don’t offer hundreds of sub-par blends because, in our case, less is most definitely more.
We curate and create the perfect selection, and we’re grateful that the choices we’ve made have been recognised by Great Taste Awards for three years running, gaining prestigious 3-star and 2-star awards.
Unravel Tea is now based in the Scottish Highlands, where we recently relocated due to outgrowing the tiny Aberdeen flat we took root in!
Whether you’re a retailer looking to stock our selection for your discerning customers, or you want to up level your own tea drinking experience, we’d love to help.
Warning: trying our teas may result in gifting those dusty tea boxes to unsuspecting folks.
