Catherine Whyte meets Jennifer Wood, founder of Canton Tea Company, supplier of rare and classic teas
Wouldn’t it be dreadful to live in a country without tea, opined the great Noel Coward. But did you know that our borough played a crucial role in the journey of this beverage to the centre of the nation’s heart?
Catherine of Braganza – wife to Charles II – would often pop over to see Elizabeth, Duchess of Lauderdale at Ham House, where the powerful pair would sit and drink the latest hot new thing from Europe. Indeed, Elizabeth’s exceptional porcelain teapot is one of Ham’s star exhibits, reported to be the first ever to have graced an English home.
And, of course, there’s Dial House, just across the water at Twickenham, home to the Twining dynasty for around 150 years.
So, with such a great heritage on the doorstep, it’s a pleasure to meet Jennifer Wood, founder of Canton Tea Co, whose range of rare and classic teas can be supped at big name venues such as Sky Garden, Pollen Street Social, Goodwood and Deliciously Ella’s The Mae Deli.
At her Teddington home, we walk to her purpose-built office at the bottom of the garden, where raised beds with olive, fig and lemon trees create a Mediterranean feel. Monty Don, it transpires, helped her to remodel it for his programme Big Dreams, Small Spaces, which aired on BBC2 earlier this year.
Inside, it doesn’t take long for a cup of tea to appear: a dark oolong from the Wuyi Mountains in China’s Fujian province by the name of Da Hong Pao, not dissimilar to what Catherine of Braganza and Elizabeth would have drunk at Ham House all those years ago.
“The most exclusive, expensive Da Hong Pao comes from three mother bushes that sit high up on a rock,” explains Jennifer, in a voice as fine as bone china. “They are so revered that it’s almost like a pilgrimage to go and see them. In fact, some of these rare leaves are given to the Queen every year.”
Jennifer has tapped into this well-brewed heritage and sources her teas solely from smaller, family-run farms and gardens. Indeed, she is immensely proud that the company is an approved supplier of the Sustainable Restaurant Association. It’s a world away from the large, colonial plantations of old.
“Take the Glenburn Tea Estate in Darjeeling,” she says. “There’s nothing colonial about it. The family has been there for generations. It’s a real, thriving community with a school and a hospital.”
Nor are these small businesses wedded purely to traditional teas.
“Glenburn’s Moonshine Darjeeling (named for its delicate silver tips, not after any illicit practice) is a new, delicious, lightly oxidised tea that is neither a white tea nor an oolong.”
The seeds of Jennifer’s fascination with provenance may well have been planted during her years as a copywriter for The Body Shop, when the brand was in its giddy, colourful heyday.
“The focus back then was as much on campaigns to save the rainforest and stop animal testing as on the beauty products themselves,” she says, with a slightly wistful tone.
Anita Roddick was a passionate environmental activist and Jennifer was instrumental in helping to get her message across, working on The Body Shop’s first ever posters which blazed powerfully across the shop fronts, inviting consumers to make the connection between product and producer. ‘Love Your Body’ was one of her most memorable slogans.
It was during a career break, however, that Jennifer first considered going into the tea business.
“My husband worked in publishing and travelled a lot to Taiwan,” she explains. “Every year, he was given this tub of Pouchong tea by his great friend and mentor, Professor Lin.
“We’d been drinking this astonishing tea for a good 15 or so years. It has great big leaves that unravel in the water, with a fruity aroma and a beautiful apricot finish. We loved it so much that we would drink it casually with friends and share it around.
“Anyway, I just thought it would be a great idea to import it. Let’s get this tea out there, I thought. At that time most people regarded green tea as a kind of bitter medicine. I wanted to change that perception. So we called Professor Lin to ask him how much it cost.
“’Ah,’ he said. ‘The one you’ve been drinking is in the region of $2,500 a kilo.’ Turned out, we had been unwittingly drinking one of the most expensive teas in the world!”
A sign of good taste, at least. Since then, Canton has gone from strength to strength, supplying some of the most exclusive restaurants and venues in the capital: Canton tea is now officially hot property. As we speak, Jennifer is about to go on tour to promote her new rare tea range of fragrances produced in partnership with Jo Malone.
Moreover, in addition to its numerous learned contacts abroad, Canton collaborates with some of the biggest names in UK tea, such as writer and tea historian Jane Pettigrew MBE and ‘rare tea hunter’ Phil Mumby. It also works with Jekka McVicar, who styled Jamie Oliver’s private herb garden, on its herbal teas. Collaboration is key for Jennifer.
And the journey is far from over.
“We have the coffee geek; now we are seeing the emergence of the tea geek too. People are no longer happy with just a tea bag: when they go for afternoon tea they expect something better. Also, young people are so much more into tea, especially matcha. It gives me so much pleasure to see.”
As well as running seasonal tea tasting sessions at Petersham Nurseries, Jennifer is an Associate at the recently opened UK Tea Academy, the first organisation in the country to offer a professionally certified course on tea – not to mention the charmingly titled ‘Tea Infusiasts’ courses for amateur cuppa lovers.
Time to give those baristas a run for their coffee…
Purchase Canton Tea online at cantonteaco.com or in person at Selfridges; Waterstones in Richmond; Bhuti, the new health spa at The Bingham; and La Casa del Habano in Teddington.
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