The Lowell Hotel to Debut Scotland's 1st Home-Grown Tea
Ahem. It's very high tea time at the Lowell Hotel.
— -- It’s Scottish tea time, America!
Scotland's first home-grown tea is making its way to U.S. soil next week.
"Next Tuesday, the Upper-East Side’s acclaimed Lowell Hotel will be the first U.S. establishment to serve Scotland’s only home-grown teas in the atmospheric surroundings of its iconic Pembroke Room. Guests and visitors of the New York hotel will be some of the first in America to taste the only white and smoked teas grown by The Wee Tea Plantation at the Dalreoch Estate in Amulree, Perthshire,” The Wee Tea Plantation & Wee Tea Co. news release reads.
Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party, will be in attendance at the U.S. launch event recognizing the first tea grown in Scotland.
The Wee Tea Co.’s master tea maker, Jamie Russell, will be preparing the Scottish-blended tea for those in attendance, company owner and managing director Tam O'Braan told ABC News.
Russell describes the flavor profile of the tea in the news release: “Taken from just the first two leaves and the tip, the teas offer a refined and very Scottish flavor of both natural freshness and a rich peaty glen. Being the only smoked white tea in the world, it has a very subtle unique flavor similar in nature to a peaty whisky.”
O’Braan, who harvested the first crop last year, is the agronomist behind the planting and growing but has worked with Russell to convert the healthy leaf into a noteworthy high-level tea in the foothills of the Scottish highlands that was formally land used for a sheep farm, the release reads.
The teas, worth about $6.50 a cup, have been served at British State dinners and supplied to the head of state before they were requested to be stocked at Fortnum & Mason last November, the company's news release states.
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