Before I went to Scotland, I decided that I had to buy Scottish tea. The whole idea came as I was watching Escape to the Country (Hi Netflix, please bring it back) so I started googling for places to buy tea from. Nicole from Tea For Me, Please suggested Kinnettles Gold from Pekoe Tea and it sounded really good.

Buying the Tea: My Visit to PekoeTea

PekoeTea is located at 20 Leven Street in Edinburgh and it was actually pretty far from the old town. Or at least it felt that way; I think we walked for about 30 minutes before we reached.

The shop was totally worth it. It’s very bright, airy, and inviting. I immediately honed into the shelves of tea (if only I could have such a pretty tea shelf in the future!) and managed to grab a tin of Kinnettles Gold.

There are a few tables and chairs, as well as a tea bar in the shop, so I can see this as being a great place to spend a few hours trying out different types of tea. Sadly, we didn’t have much time so all I could do was to buy my tea and make some conversation.

It’s always interesting to talk to tea lovers from all over the world! I was asking about Wee Tea Farm scandal and it kind of segued into the prevalence of tea fraud/mislabelled tea. I think it’s really cool that PekoeTea has a line of teas where they source directly from the farmers – I personally feel that this is the best way to make sure that farmers get fair prices. If you go through the distributors, then farmers may be getting less than what you might pay them directly because the distributors need their cut too. Note: I’m not dissing distributors – there is value in people consolidating and pre-vetting teas from various different sources. After all, that’s what straight tea brands do as well. But if you want to support farmers, it’s best to buy direct whenever possible because in many countries, the farmers are the ones with the lowest profit margins.

First Impressions of Kinnettles Gold

This is easily the most expensive tea that I’ve bought (£40 for 20g) so I waited until my tea session with Cher to bring this out. I figured that it was only appropriate that my biggest tea-nerd friend was there to try this tea with me.

The dry leaves were very beautiful: thin and wiry with lots of golden tips. We thought they smelled interesting; I got a spicy note while Cher picked up plum notes. Just smelling this made us very excited to try it.

We brewed this tea gongfu-style and it produced a beautiful golden tea liquor. It smelled pretty green for a black tea, which was surprising to me given the colour. When we tried the tea, I got vegetal and malty notes, while Cher got pine notes. What we all agreed was that this was a very sweet black tea with something extra that we couldn’t place but definitely liked. The third member of our tea session told us that although he doesn’t normally like black tea, he really likes this; that spoke volumes to me.

The astringency and aftertaste of the tea was pretty good as well. We managed to get four steeps after this and we might have been able to squeeze more out of it, but with so many other teas (like the Yunnan Purple Bud) to drink, we decided to stop at four. The third and fourth steeps felt pretty dry, which was why we didn’t push it much further. I did notice that the liquor from the fourth steep was more vegetal and had a fruity note at the end.

The spent leaves weren’t very big but they were whole and felt very tender.

If you’re visiting Edinburgh, I’d highly recommend paying PekoeTea a visit and getting some Kinnettles Gold if you can. It’s definitely on the pricey side, but it’s a unique tea and one that’s worth trying. I hope to be able to visit Kinnettles tea farm in the future and see what it’s like. At the very least, I hope to go back to PekoeTea and try more of their teas.

If You Want to Visit PekoeTea

Their Website (Kinnettles Gold Product Page)

Address:

20 Leven Street
Edinburgh, EH3 9LJ
Scotland, UK

Opening Hours:

Mon-Sat: 10 am to 6 pm
Sun: 12 pm to 5 pom