It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…

… eeeeeevery where you gooooooo…. ahem. We’re unpacking decorations, making lists, checking them twice, and searching for the sellotape.

And tomorrow is a rather special day, because on December 11th its our Birthday. We’d like to say a huge thank you to all of you for making The Gilded Teapot what it is – it’s all thanks to you, you wonderful tea and coffee lovers, that we can be here celebrating our birthday and looking forward to another year.

And so, to Christmas…

We’re open every day until 4pm on Christmas Eve, and for late night shopping on Thursday evenings until 8pm. You can also order all your winter warmers and Christmas tea and coffee gifts on our website – remember to order before December 20th for UK delivery.

And because its our birthday, between December 11th – 20th, for every order over £30 we’ll include a complimentary packet of Dorset Brew tea

 

Now let’s wrap up those presents, eat, drink, and be merry!

Exciting Times – Theo Paphitis & The Anonymous Travelling Market

Well good golly gosh, what a week we’ve had! Let me tell you a tale of some serious tea excitement.

Last Sunday we took a punt on something – we’re not normally the gambling type, but every Sunday evening a certain Mr. Theo Paphitis of Dragon’s Den hosts a small business competition on Twitter called #SBS or Small Business Sunday. So we thought we’d tweet Theo about The Gilded Teapot – and we could hardly believe our inbox. After an evening of general pottering around I checked our emails, and there it was – “You were re-tweeted by @TheoPhaphitis”. He likes good tea! Top chap. All incredibly humbling. Thank you, Theo!

Anyway, back to what’s been going on in Dorset. Now that everything has thawed and spring is beginning to… spring, we thought we’d venture out to the wonderful Anonymous Travelling Market with our stall for the very first time.  It was a brilliant day out – music, food, giant bubbles and plenty of free tea to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, and all in the gorgeous surroundings of the Larmer Tree Gardens in North Dorset.

The next market is on April 14th 2012 at Wincanton Racecourse – looks like its going to be a stonking day! You can find out more on their website right here.

And before I have to dash, there’s just enough time to tell you about an excellent day we had at the London School of Coffee levelling up our skills on their advanced barista course – watch out Dorchester, our takeaways just got even better! If you see us tinkering around with stopwatches, small electronic scales and equations, don’t be alarmed – we’re working on the science and art of espresso making to bring you the perfect shot. Its absolutely fascinating.

Until next time, tea and coffee lovers!

www.thegildedteapot.com

Tea Thrills and Spills

So, it’s Valentines Day, the yearly excuse for roses and smooching. I must admit, here at the Gilded Teapot we’re a little more Texas Chainsaw and curry than RomComs and bubbly, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t hopeless romantics at heart… in fact, there’s a new love in our life. I’m all giddy… allow me to introduce you to the newest member of The Gilded Teapot being unleashed this summer…

Hold onto your hats! It’s the Travelling Tea & Coffee House. Tired of going to festivals and having to put up with a teabag in a plastic cup? Well, no more tea hum-drummery! We are here for you, serving all manner delicious delights from proper loose leaf teas, top notch coffees, Matcha Lattes, traditional milky sweet Chai, and anything else your tea and coffee heart so desires.

Follow our blog and Twitter to find out where we’ll be! We’re very, very excited.

(and if you’d like us to come to your event, you can email us info@thegildedteapot.com)

The Year of the Dragon

Another new year! Brilliant. We’ve now entered the Chinese year of the Dragon, so to celebrate here at the Gilded Teapot, we had a free tea tasting (with fortune cookies) in the shop. Yum yum yum

We tasted some of China’s famous teas – Silver Needle, Dragon Well, beautiful black tea and the fabled Oriental Beauty – one of the world’s rarest Oolongs. What makes Oriental Beauty special and so darn delicious is something rather unusual. This tea comes from Taiwan and can only be produced every few years, because it needs a visitor – the Tea Jassid to be precise. These little aphids come to live on the tea plants, and to defend itself against these guests, the plant produces an enzyme to defend itself. At this point the leaf and the bud are picked and it this that makes the tea. The end result is a beautiful citrus muscatel brew the colour of Golden Syrup. Sublime.

So what else has been going on? Well, to brew our China teas we had a brand new piece of tea brewing equipment to play with!

These lovely fellas are the end result of a brilliant collaboration between potter extraordinaire Linda Bloomfield and two professional tea tasters and artisan importers. They’re a modern twist on the traditional Chinese Gaiwan, a lidded cup used for tea brewing, but these are much larger with a pouring lip and rounded top to give maximum perfume from the leaves after they’ve been brewed. So, a big hello to our new Gaiwans! I wonder how we ever managed without them.

And it hasn’t just been Chinese New Year – last week was the first official Farmhouse Breakfast Week, so we went down to Washingpool Farm just outside of Bridport, Gaiwans in hand, to brew some tasty breakfast teas. We were right next door to the tasty folks of Denhay bacon, so we were trying to find which was the best tea to have with a bacon sarnie – we had two winners! The LaKyrsiew tea from northern India and Ceylon Kenilworth.

So, to China and back again. It’s been a fun week!

A New Year

A new year and a new blog that’s all about tea and us here at The Gilded Teapot. So welcome aboard! We’ll be keeping you updated on everything going on here – and boy do we have a lot planned!

So, a big hello to you. Here’s a little bit about us – I’m Jo, and I opened a brand new tea and coffee specialists in Dorchester, Dorset a little over a year ago. Tired of all the industrial tea bagged offerings on local supermarket shelves, we decided to bring loose leaf tea and local freshly roasted coffee to our little shop in an old tobacconists shop. And what a year it’s been so far – over one hundred teas and fourteen coffees later, we’ve got our website up and are planning all sorts of tea events and goings on for the next year…

You can follow us right here on this blog, and also on Twitter and Facebook so you’ll always be in touch with what’s cooking here at the teapot.

I love hearing about people’s first tea and coffee experiences that got them into loving the brew – be it supping Tibetan tea with butter or sipping Moroccan mint in a marketplace, do tell us what it was that got you started. Here’s what did it for me:

My family have always been big tea drinkers, and my Grandparents ran a hotel – my brother and I used to kick around in the kitchens during school holidays, and once we went to the Cash and Carry on their usual supply run (we loved riding on the big flatbed trollies). My Grandparents bought an industrial sack jam packed full of tea bags, and this particular one was having a giveaway – do you remember those dolls called Trolls? The ones with the hair? Well, there was one of these trolls in the tea sack, and one of the guys in the kitchen gave it to me. I must admit, I wasn’t really into the Trolls – I found them a bit scary to be honest, but I loved this one. Because this Troll was different – this Troll’s hair smelled of tea.

And that’s how it all began.

So thank you, Trolls and thank you, tea.

Happy New Year!