Tea and Terroir

Like so many British staple foods, tea has been commoditised to the point that most people would probably be surprised to discover that it is an agricultural product. Yet like wine, it is capable of expressing a person, a plant, and a place. This tutored tasting and discussion presents the opportunity to meet a tea grower, Geert Linnebank, and a tea importer, Jameel Lalani, and to hear about the process of tea making, from plant to cup.

Tickets are £15 apiece and limited to 100.

A special ticket that includes a 100g jar of Geert’s LaKyrsiew Black Tea is available for an extra £10, representing an exceptional value for this rare, single-origin tea.

Jameel Lalani is co-founder of Lalani & Co (www.lalaniandco.com), a London-based purveyor of single-batch teas. Their aim is to bring provenance and traceability back to premium tea, and curate a selection of rare teas from around the world.

Geert Linnebank is Co-Founder and Director of the Lakyrsiew Tea Company (http://www.lakyrsiew.com/about/), planted in 2002 in Meghalaya, India. There he and his wife Nayan grow a mixture of the finest, slow-growing Darjeeling plants and original Chinese varieties and now produce tiny quantities of the finest teas – just 1,200 kgs was made in 2010.