Real People, Real Tea (Devotea Origins Part V)

Series Note: Yet another installment in my self-indulgent series that covers all our blends and what inspired them. Never mind, I’ll be back to ranting in week or so. This is Part V.

To recap, I’ve covered our white teas, our teas named after historical figures, our mint teas and our teas with flowers in them. That leaves probably three more blogs. The last one will cover our chais, the second to last will cover some more history, and this one has the vague theme of teas that are named after real people.

Or rather, those that are left.

I’ve already written about the teas named after Lord Petersham and his sister Anna Russell here.

Lady Devotea is of course a real person, and the tea named in her honour was spoken of here.

And speaking of Lady Devotea, I’ll let her words do all the talking about the first tea to consider today: Jim’s Caravan. Lady Devotea did a guest blog on “An International Tea Moment” explaining the origins of this blend, and it is here.

Jim’s Caravan is available from both our UK and Australian distribution centres.

So, nearly finished this post and I’ve done barely any work.

Two years ago, the high tea venue that was our biggest outlet at the time organised a St Patrick’s Day High Tea. On offer was to be an excellent menu, a talk from me about Irish tea and two new blends: an Irish Breakfast Style and an Irish Afternoon Style.

The latter may well be a category we invented.

The day before the event, the ceiling of the venue collapsed during a violent storm. The event never took place.

Nevertheless, we had blended  a few kilos of two new teas, and one was our strong Irish Breakfast Style. It’s designed for lots of milk and sugar. It’s pretty bracing if you drink it neat.

There’s a guy on Twitter who I find funny, charming and quintessentially Irish. He is also quite a proud Irish Nationalist, and I could see the tea as kind of a counterpoint to our teas named after British aristocracy. So ‘Finbarr’s Revenge’ was born, as “@Finbarr353’s Revenge” didn’t have the same ring. It’s also a slight nod to the Harry Harrison novels “Queen Victoria’s Revenge” and “Montezuma’s Revenge”.

Finbarr’s Revenge is available via our Australian, UK (since closed)  and US sites. It has received rave reviews in the US in particular.

Just to add a quotient of trivia, I love the Irish Afternoon blend and we are still drinking our way through it. We called it “Dancin’ In The Moonlight” after a favourite song by Irish rock band Thin Lizzy. We made the decision not to release it as our range was already huge at the time (it’s since doubled anyway) and we didn’t need another confusingly-named black blend.

So, that’s a wrap on our “Real People” teas. But who knows who might be the next inspiration?