Suki brings new tastes and style to Afternoon Tea

Suki Tea, Northern Ireland's gourmet tea blender, has created a unique 'Afternoon Tea' range that's carefully selected and hand-blended by its team in Belfast for a stylish mid afternoon snack.

The range is targeted at foodservices particularly high-end hotels and restaurants in Britain and is a result of the company's experience of working with top chefs to create distinctive flavours to accompany the traditional afternoon tea of freshly baked scones with clotted cream, finger-sandwiches, such as the traditional cucumber, and sweet pastries.

The range, based on Suki management's knowledge of and contacts with leading Fairtrade gardens in India and Kenya, includes the company's award winning 'Earl Grey Blue Flower'.

'Earl Grey Blue Flower' is among the company's award winning teas and infusions. It has Fairtrade and organic status, as well as achieving gold in the UK Great Taste Awards 2010.

Other select teas in the range include Organic Oolong Oriental Beauty; smoky Russian Caravan; fragrant Fairtrade Organic White Monkey; Fairtrade Organic Darjeeling from India's famed Bannockburn Estate; and the floral sweetness of the hand-rolled, naturally-infused Jasmine Dragon Phoenix Pearls.

Oscar Woolley, a founding director of the boutique tea company in 2005 with Anne Rooney, says: "Afternoon tea is one of the great traditions across the British Isles. While it has tended to be a feature of high-end hotels particularly in Britain, we are aware of an increasing number restaurants and cafes seeking to expand their business by offering afternoon tea, something a bit different from the usual coffee.

"Certainly we've had a number of inquiries from restaurants about offering customers a greater choice of teas with different characteristics and flavours.

"Our objective is to encourage this developing trend by creating a unique Afternoon Tea range that offers a choice of fine teas and at prices that are really affordable.

"Over the years afternoon tea has been a great way to relax, to chill out. We want to encourage this by offering our distinctive range of teas, bringing a bit of style to the occasion.

"We'd love to see afternoon tea become a bit of a ritual, almost Japanese style, encouraging people to wind down and get more enjoyment out of life."

In addition to its new Afternoon Tea range, Suki Tea has recently introduced Matcha, the traditional finely milled green tea imported directly from Japan.Matcha is at the heart of the Japanese tea ceremonyand will be marketed by Suki to existing and new customers throughout the UK and Ireland.

As well as selling tea throughout the UK and Ireland, Suki Tea currently exports teas and infusions to Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Rwanda and Kenya.