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Our Story

We often get asked: “How did you get into selling tea?” It started with us visiting cosy tea rooms around Europe, especially in Prague and trying lots of different teas and bringing them back home to London in our suitcases. We discovered ‘Tiger Spring’ tea, a famous high-grade type of Chinese green tea called Long Jing (Dragon Well). We were captivated by its special taste and intrigued by the sheer variety of teas around, not yet widely available. This led us to want to share our tea discoveries with others. Our interest in tea grew and we started to sell loose tea at various farmers markets. We named ourselves Tiger Spring Tea from happy recollections of finding and drinking this rather special green tea.

Bergamia Tea behind the scenes family business

We moved from London to Kent to bigger premises for our growing family and to expand our tea venture. After failed attempts to find a quality Earl Grey tea, we now had enough space to start scenting our very own Earl Grey tea. We called it Real Earl Grey to emphasise the fact that we use real bergamot oil in this special blend. The popularity of our freshly scented tea was such that we decided to rename ourselves after the Latin name for the bergamot fruit (Citrus Bergamia), the oil of which is used to scent our tea. The aroma of fresh bergamot oil fills our home so often and we love the scent so much that ‘Bergamia Tea’ seemed fitting!

We wonder whether our love affair with tea started long before we met. Nigel was growing up in a family of avid tea drinkers and remembers getting a prize as a child in a fancy-dress competition, dressed as a teapot! Lenka has fond memories of fabulous tea drinking sessions as a teenager in the enchanting tearooms of Bohemia (Czech Republic). She still remembers tasting her first cup of Earl Grey tea, mesmerised by its beautiful golden colour and the unforgettable smell and taste, brewed to perfection by her friend’s mum in a glass teapot!

Our Values

We endeavour to satisfy tea drinkers who appreciate quality, fresh food and drink, like to buy their tea from a small producer and support independent shops and farmers markets. We are based in the small village of Rodmersham, in Kent in the South East of England. We love quality food and drink and we appreciate our customers who share the same passion for quality tea and like to support independent producers. That’s why we sell tea not only online, but also at farmers’ markets and events in Kent, Surrey & London.

Nigel

We enjoy getting to know our customers through meeting them in person and delight in offering advice to suit their tea drinking requirements. Some of them bring our re-closable pouches (or their own packaging tea caddies etc.) back for their tea re-fills so they limit their packaging waste. We like that loose leaf tea is great for composting or can be recycled through the council food waste collection scheme. That’s what we do ourselves and recommend this to our customers too.

We are members of Produced in Kent and NMTF, and support Just a Card campaign.

What's Different About Us

We specialise in and only stock and sell loose leaf tea.

All of our tea is selected, tasted, blended and hand-packed by us in house.

We don’t over stock our teas to compromise on freshness.

We trade not only online but also at various farmers' markets and events, where customers can see and smell the tea before their purchase.

We offer a wide range of pouch weights from 50g to 1kg for most of our teas to suit the occasional tea drinker to the avid tea imbiber!

We like to recycle and re-use packaging wherever possible. At most of our market stalls you can bring back our pouches and re-use them when you buy more tea and get your packaging discount or you can do the most eco-friendly option (packaging-free) by bringing your own tea tin, or any container.

Our Green Pledge

Although we are a small company we understand that everyone can make a difference however small when it comes to the environment. As a family business we are always looking out for new eco-friendly options and ideas for our home, and looking for how we can implement these into our business. Recycling is relatively easy for most small businesses and we recycle everything we can. We try to limit our food waste and we recycle part of it through the council scheme and the rest is composted in our garden, especially when tea leaves are great for composting! Since launching our new website we’ve pledged to reduce our paper consumption, therefore we have stopped printing our customers invoices, and provide only online copies. We use green energy supplier which provides 100% renewable electricity, who claims that every average member lowers their carbon impact by 3.4 tonnes of CO2 a year. That’s the hard work of around 1689 trees. In our office we only use 100% recycled paper.

Our Quality Pledge

If we think something is not good enough, we won’t sell it to our customers. That’s why we don’t over stock our teas and regularly freshly blend or scent our teas according to demand, to put it simply:” We drink the teas we sell! “

Blue Cornflowers