Sir Stuart takes its name from a friend of the family behind The Kent and Sussex Tea and Coffee Company: after a trip east, Stuart Cleary came home full of ideas about the region's spices and flavours, and this blend grew out of that trip. It pairs green and black tea leaves with ginger root, fennel, cardamom seeds, rose petals and cornflower blossoms, plus natural flavouring, and the cup shows it — floral and fruity in the same breath, with rose and citrus up front and lemon running underneath, deepened by date and honey sweetness and a vegetal backbone from the tea itself.
Cardamom is one of the oldest spices known, drawn from seed pods in the ginger family, and ginger root has been used for something like five thousand years, roughly as long as people have been drinking tea. Neither carries caffeine on its own, so the buzz here comes entirely from the leaf: green tea runs lighter, around 30mg a serving, while black tea sits higher, closer to 45mg in an eight-ounce cup, making this a blend that can lean either gentle or brisk depending on how it's steeped.
Green and black tea both bring a mix of antioxidants to the cup, and green tea in particular has long been associated with everyday wellness, though nothing here should be read as a treatment for anything in particular.
To brew it, use about five grams of loose leaf per cup, water at 70°C, and give it two to three minutes to steep. Honey or lemon suit it well if you want to soften the spice, or it can simply be served black and let the rose and citrus carry the cup on their own.
