The packaging script of popular teabags are long on praise and hype, but
contain no real information about the provenance of the tea. Can anybody
here tell me where Lipton, Red Rose, etc. are grown and how they are
processed and blended? They often claim to be "orange pekoe and pekoe" which
impies Indian origin, but that is only part of the story. Is this stuff
really just the sweepings off the tea processors' factory floors?

Even the internet search engines produce no information that I've been able
to find about the subject. Are Lipton's sources a proprietary secret?

--Rich

The commercial teas are proprietary blends. It doesn't matter if loose
or bagged. They insure the same consistent taste. At best they might
list the countries of origin on the packaging. Lipton has plantations
in India so they bypass the middle man at auction. Bagged tea is
generally fines from India,Ceylon,Africa and BOP from Asia. The grade
doesn't determine the taste. I think it is an urban myth they are from
the factory floor. Normally it results from the sifting process or the
last screen. I can find cheaper loose teas from India in the ethnic
stores than teabags in my local grocery. In general loose is preferred
over teabags but they are more convenient. I don't think in general
that teabags perse are 'inferior' from any short cuts. It is a result
of convenience, price and a particular taste. Lipton US teabags are
formulated for iced tea. Teabags themselves have ergonometrics like
bleached,unbleached glued,staple bag,disc flowthru,single that might
alter the taste. When I use teabags it is with a pot and not a cup.

Jim

Rich wrote:
> The packaging script of popular teabags are long on praise and hype, but
> contain no real information about the provenance of the tea. Can anybody
> here tell me where Lipton, Red Rose, etc. are grown and how they are
> processed and blended? They often claim to be "orange pekoe and pekoe" which
> impies Indian origin, but that is only part of the story. Is this stuff
> really just the sweepings off the tea processors' factory floors?
>
> Even the internet search engines produce no information that I've been able
> to find about the subject. Are Lipton's sources a proprietary secret?
>
> --Rich

Rich wrote:
> The packaging script of popular teabags are long on praise and hype, but
> contain no real information about the provenance of the tea. Can anybody
> here tell me where Lipton, Red Rose, etc. are grown and how they are
> processed and blended? They often claim to be "orange pekoe and pekoe" which
> impies Indian origin, but that is only part of the story. Is this stuff
> really just the sweepings off the tea processors' factory floors?
>
> Even the internet search engines produce no information that I've been able
> to find about the subject. Are Lipton's sources a proprietary secret?
>
> --Rich

It is largely a mystery which is where I think a lot of the speculation
about floor sweepings come from. It is most likely blended from some
pretty good teas, just that what is used is the unused fine bits from
processing and selling the full leaves and prettier stuff. It is still
tea and can produce a decent cup, just not a nice full leaf that will
unfurl beautifully and command top dollar.

Lipton has their own trees, and many others probably contract with
certain growers. I would imagine a few may buy lots at auction, but
this would not afford the consistency the main brands are known for.
And that is the real amazing part of many bagged teas, consistency. A
cup of Lipton today will be just like the one I had sitting in tepid
water at a convention 4 years ago and at the next convention in 2018.
There is a lot to be said for that in tea. I don't thin the sources are
the secret, more the blending with these teas. The sheer amount of tea
consumed by these companies would make it easy to trace if you talked
to a few of the right people.

- Dominic

If I've got my story straight, Lipton owns quite a few tea gardens in Sri Lanka/Ceylon. Probably safe to assume that a good bit of Ceylon goes into their tea.

Thanks,
Bill

http://www.teaguyspeaks.com

@ Rich. What others in this string have said about the word grade in
tea referring to leaf size and not to quality is correct. Every tea
factory produces large leaf teas all the way down to dusts. Frequently,
a factory's dusts fetch higher prices in the world market than the
large leaf (OP is a large leaf grade) teas.

"Orange Pekoe and Pekoe" do not actually imply Indian origin. These
grade names were first coined in China, moved onto India, and then
onwards to every other tea growing origin on earth.

The blends of the major brands are proprietary secrets. Within a given
market like the USA, the different brands have numerous blends.
Unilever (Lipton & Brooke Bond) for example private label packs all of
WalMart's teas which are quite poor. This was not Unilever's choice, it
was a radically low price limit that was forced upon them by their
customer that obliges them to use rubbish in the WalMart blends. In
sum, you have two tiers for the blenders - their own famous brands and
those for which they private-label package like the supermarket chains
and institutional accounts. On the institutional market, if you say
compare a teabag of Red Rose's from their own brand pack to the one
they private-label for the restaurant industry at say McDonalds, you
will find the qualities different as night and day.

The major blenders (Unilever/UK/NL is the world's largest,
TataTetley/India is number two and Dilmah/SriLanka is number three)
customize their blends to each geography into which they sell to adjust
for the varying consumer tastes and the varying local characteristics
like hard vs soft tap waters etc.

Unilever and Tata are both in the process of divesting themselves of
the tea estate assets in India. It's expected they will do the same in
other tea regions like Africa pretty soon as well.The only new country
investment in tea estates made in the past decade of the two companies
was in Turkey by Unilever. Turkey, a huge high quality tea consuming
nation, refuses to drink its own lousy teas - they import mostly
Ceylon's for that purpose, while they export their own crop mostly to
the US for Lipton's WalMart blends.

The leading countries supplying the USA with most of its teas are in
approximate order: China, Argentina, Indonesia, Vietnam and Turkey.
While Indonesia, China and particularly Vietnam make some gorgeous
teas, those aren't the ones coming into the USA in volume.

So far as the weekly and fortnitely world tea auctions in India, Sri
Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi, Unilever must buy most all its
requirements in the auctions for practical as well as well as
politically correct reasons. There are many areas like Vietnam,
Argentina, Turkey, etc whose teas aren't sold in any tea auction,
simply a result of geography.

Rich wrote:
> The packaging script of popular teabags are long on praise and hype, but
> contain no real information about the provenance of the tea. Can anybody
> here tell me where Lipton, Red Rose, etc. are grown and how they are
> processed and blended? They often claim to be "orange pekoe and pekoe" which
> impies Indian origin, but that is only part of the story. Is this stuff
> really just the sweepings off the tea processors' factory floors?
>
> Even the internet search engines produce no information that I've been able
> to find about the subject. Are Lipton's sources a proprietary secret?
>
> --Rich

"jd" > writes:

> [...interesting analysis of the economics of blended teas...]
>
> So far as the weekly and fortnitely world tea auctions in India, Sri
> Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi, Unilever must buy most all its
> requirements in the auctions for practical as well as well as
> politically correct reasons.

Could you give examples of practical and politically correct reasons,
please?

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html

@ Bill. Sorry, no, Unilever (Lipton/BrookeBond) owns no tea estates in
Sri Lanka. The largest owner of tea estates in Sri Lanka is the holding
company which owns Dilmah Tea ("CTEA" on the Colombo Shares Exchange).
The CTEA group is also the second largest owner of tea estates in south
India, second to TataTetley who are quickly selling off their estates
globally.
Tea Guy wrote:
> If I've got my story straight, Lipton owns quite a few tea gardens in
> Sri Lanka/Ceylon. Probably safe to assume that a good bit of Ceylon
> goes into their tea.
>
> Thanks,
> Bill
>
> http://www.teaguyspeaks.com
>
>
> Rich Wrote:
> >
> > Even the internet search engines produce no information that I've been
> > able
> > to find about the subject. Are Lipton's sources a proprietary secret?
> >
> > --Rich
>
>
> --
> Tea Guy

Rich > wrote:
>The packaging script of popular teabags are long on praise and hype, but
>contain no real information about the provenance of the tea. Can anybody
>here tell me where Lipton, Red Rose, etc. are grown and how they are
>processed and blended? They often claim to be "orange pekoe and pekoe" which
>impies Indian origin, but that is only part of the story. Is this stuff
>really just the sweepings off the tea processors' factory floors?

Depends. They are blended from teas grown in India, Africa, and often
Argentina. These teas are normally machine-harvested with hedge shears
or similar to just take everything off the plant, and they are harvested
continuously rather than in individual flushes.

>Even the internet search engines produce no information that I've been able
>to find about the subject. Are Lipton's sources a proprietary secret?

They are not, BUT the particular blend they use is a proprietary secret
and it changes from batch to batch. Remember their notion here is to
make tea that is uniform from bag to bag, and therefore their blend gets
alterated to compensate for changes in the source materials.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

@ Lew

Thanks for the compliment on the economics of the global tea trade,
moreso than just the blended tea segment of it. As a founding partner
in a Mombasa Tea Auctioneer firm (a "selling brokerage" meaning one who
works for the benefit of the tea producers in its weekly auction
catalog) and having interests in one of their opposites in Colombo, Sri
Lanka, I assure you that tea is a fascinating edible commodity in many
senses.

While the global trade in raw tea far exceeds that in raw coffee now as
ever going back centuries, tea remains the only major edible commodity
on earth with no futures traded on it on the developed world futures
markets (US, UK, Europe, Japan, Australia). The reason why is simple -
the industry has never wanted non-tea-experts speculating on the the
price on our commodity in an unknowledgeable fashion. Depending on the
size of the non-tea-expert players, some of those big kids could make
topsy-turvy of a global market which has nicely self-regulated prices
for centuries based on the elegant econometric beauty of pure supply
and demand for all qualities manufactured at all origins.

The five origins I mentioned are five of the six ones with weekly or
fortnitely tea auctions globally. Bangladesh also has a bouyant weekly
tea auction for its production and that country rounds out the total
six where tea is grown and regularly auctioned; I didn't mention it as
the sixth at first because most all its tea in the Chittagong auction
is used for internal domestic packaging to serve the domestic market.

The six countries' weekly weighted composite sets the weekly world
price for tea. In the weighting, Ceylon's Colombo Auction and Kenya's
Mombasa Auction combined dominate because those two countries are the
world's two top exporters of bulk tea in tonnage, and in the case of
Sri Lanka, in dollar value as well.

China is interested in establishing their own weekly tea auction for
the first time ever, and their opposites in the Calcutta, Colombo and
Mombasa auctions have been consulting China starting this past six
months on how best to establish same.

On your question about practical and politically reasons for Unilever's
auctions' participations.

The practical is easy - they simply need the weekly / fortnitely
weights of tea at the six origin auction countries in order to make
their weekly global blends. This has always been the case.

The politically correct is naturally more sensitive as well as more
complex - it boils down to this - since the time of wholesale global
privitasation of the tea production industry which took place during
the early 1990's, it has become imperative that major publically owned
multinationals like Unilever "do the right thing" vis a vis sourcing
with price transparancy in those six countries which hold weekly /
fortnitely auctions.








Lewis Perin wrote:
> "jd" > writes:
>
> > [...interesting analysis of the economics of blended teas...]
> >
> > So far as the weekly and fortnitely world tea auctions in India, Sri
> > Lanka, Indonesia, Kenya and Malawi, Unilever must buy most all its
> > requirements in the auctions for practical as well as well as
> > politically correct reasons.
>
> Could you give examples of practical and politically correct reasons,
> please?
>
> /Lew
> ---
> Lew Perin /
> http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html