Home-grown, hand-picked, artfully-blended herbal and wild teas. All ingredients from our Cambrian mountain forest garden.

Plucking good teas since 2011

Our blends

Indiginous, local teas that bring delight and subtle new flavours to discerning sippers. Each tea is carefully blended from just three ingredients picked and processed by hand.

No 1 : Rise

Birch Leaf 64%
Rosebay Willowherb Flower 18%
Mugwort Leaf 18%

Pleasingly astringent tannin notes; a good alternative to green tea

50g / 33 mugs

£6.60

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This tea came out top in blind tastings when we first launched - it has the familiar affect of astringency we know from regular tea. We pluck our birch leaves in June, when they have developed tannin and lost their youthful tenderness but before they become jaded. We add to the uplifting effect of birch with a little Chinese variety of Mugwort which we grow for its strongly aromatic flavour (it's related to Rosemary and Wormwood). Rosebay Willowherb flowers add a purple flourish, unfurling and fading as they brew.

No 2 : Relax

Rosebay Willowherb Leaf 56%
Hawthorn Blossom & Leaf 24%
Meadowsweet Flower 20%

Complex honeyed citrus notes with a hint of woody depth.

50g / 33 mugs

£6.60

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Hawthorn blossom has been found to contain the best profile of natural medicinal elements when harvested at its most beautiful. We aim for that perfect moment on a sunny spring day to gather it. Hawthorn's complex woody flavour compliments meadowsweet's honeyed overtones with a light citrus base from rosebay willowherb leaves.

No 3 : Refresh

Peppermint Leaf 34%
Nettle Leaf 33%
Bramble Leaf 33%

Refreshing peppermint sings with undertones of mineral-rich nettle and mild bramble leaf.

50g / 33 mugs

£6.60

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We first grew Black Mitcham Peppermint on the recommendation of someone we trust, that it makes the best mint tea. We agree. We blend it with two spring tonic ingredients - nettle, famed for its mineral content and blackberry bramble, lending a bit of tannin for a soothing, pleasantly astringent base.

No 4 : Rest

Wild Raspberry Leaf 47%
Fennel Fronds 33%
Rose Petals 20%

Delightfully floral rose top notes with complimenting fennel tones, rounded with raspberry leaf.

50g / 33 mugs

£6.60

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This is a tangle of tea - You might not get exactly the same ratio of herbs in every brew! Two ingredients from the rose family feature in this blend, mixed with the sweetly aniseed flavour of fennel. Wild raspberry grows in abundance where we live and as with other brambles, the leaves make a good base, having just a little tannin to support sweet floral high notes. We grow Rosa rugosa for their beautifully scented petals and share the harvest with local wild bees, working hard alongside us in the hills.

Pick your own with this A2 poster showing you what Free Teas might be growing somewhere near you. Put this up in your kitchen and fill your cupboard with ingredients that you can blend yourself. The poster includes 42 common plants with advice about foraging.

£6.50 with free postage

About Us

What's special about Fine Pluck?

Fine Pluck is a celebration of what an upland small-holding can offer, with only a little intervention from we humans.

When we launched in 2011 we couldn’t find any other herbal tea producers using only UK-grown herbs. As a nation, many of us are experts on a worldwide cornucopia of teas we’ve inherited a taste for. Yet for years we have walked alongside leaves and flowers we’re unable to identify, let alone know if they make a good tea. We hope we can help to inspire a thirst for what’s local and good and we don’t mind whether you buy our blends or go and pluck your own.

Only 3 ingredients

We're passionate about our blends being just three herbs. So many other herbal blends are named after one herb then list about eight more ingredients!

When we decided what to use our smallholding / emerging forest garden for, or more accurately, when we observed that it was already effectively a herbal tea garden, we knew that what would set our teas apart from the rest was being unique in producing all our blends exclusively from UK grown and harvested herbs but you probably already know that.

We deliberately created each of our blends from just three herbs. By doing that carefully, we have crafted a balanced and flavourful cup of tea. Especially as some of our ingredients are likely to be unfamiliar, we think its good not to blur too many flavours together. And its fun to be able to detect the flavour and effect of each herb in the blend as well as enjoying the trio together.

Our blends are the 3 herbs listed on the pack and have either grown wild or been cultivated adhering to organic principles (we hope you take our word; we’re not certified organic). No pesticides or chemicals of any other kind have been used on the land we harvest from. Our herbs are plucked, dried, blended and packed; there are no hidden processes. Fine Pluck blends are periodically analysed for water activity, to ensure they are dried sufficiently to prevent spoilage.

Ethics

Fine Pluck is a delightful business to be part of – it isnt a political or ethical statement. It developed from our love of foraging and new recipe development. But we are also permaculture designers who think it is high-time we started thinking regeneratively rather than just sustainably about our partnership with the world were part of. We're not especially political or ranty about that, it just seems to make sense.

Our teas arent certified organic, but rest assured that the permaculture principles we follow are in the same vein.

Medicinal herbal effects

We're well aware that many plants have an effect on the body, mild or powerful, positive or negative. For example chamomile is commonly associated with a calming effect, fennel and mint are often used as aides to digestion. Whilst many of the ingredients we use have a herbal effect on the body (extremely mild at the doses where pleasant flavour is the top consideration) we primarily blend for taste – however we try not to put ingredients together that have clashing herbal effects.

We have some very limited knowledge of the western medical herbal tradition, just enough to know the basics for our own information.

Bitter is good

Many of our ingredients are listed as bitter or tannin. Don't let this put you off. What most people like about every day-builders tea (Camellia sinensis), whether black or green, is that it is mildly astringent through its tannin content. So, many of our teas with herbs containing tannin will be attractive to fans of 'normal tea'. We even list those that are black-tea or green-tea like on our poster.

A bitter taste on the palate is especially beneficial as a stimulant to our digestion and liver function. Drinking or eating something bitter at the beginning of a meal encourages digestive processes to kick in.

Fine Pluck, where did the name come from?

'Fine pluck' is actually tea harvesting terminology. When just the growing tip and one leaf was harvested (only for the Emperor of China and senior officials), this was called the Imperial pluck. Nowadays the best tea is the fine pluck, the growing tip plus two leaves.

So, the verb, fine pluck, describes what we're attempting to do; picking by hand allows us to select, during harvest, the best looking leaves, buds and flowers rather than using a machine to indiscriminately cut everything, stalk, dead leaves and all. Our name gives some people malapropic issues but this isnt intentional. Honestly.

Contact Us

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Fine Pluck, Troed yr Esgair Barn, SY18 6RS, Wales

Company No: 04562258

VAT No: 350442724

Current Food Standards Agency Food Hygiene Rating: 5 - view