It’s hard to imagine Cornish Tea as a company with just one product, but back in October 2012, that’s how it was. That product – our flagship tea – was Smugglers Brew, and it took less than ten months for our founder, Duncan, to develop what has since become a firm favourite flavour of Cornwall, for tea-lovers around the UK.
Identifiably Cornish, blended to delight your palate and stir your senses, and
designed as an ‘all-day, everyday’ tea, Smugglers Brew epitomises the very soul
of Cornish Tea. That is, to provide a good, honest cup that you will absolutely love. So how did they come up with it? “You’re going to have to dress this up
a bit,” Duncan laughs. “We went to our general supplier of teas and just said ‘what do we do?’. We didn’t have a clue! We had a selection of about four different teas lined up, and we were going along, slurping them and spitting them out – because that’s how you taste tea. “Straight away I knew this wasn’t going to work, so I said ‘what I want you to do is make three cups of tea; put one sugar in each and a dash of semi-skimmed milk. Ben Hitchcock was the tea blender’s name, and he said ‘you can’t taste tea like that!’ I told him ‘that’s how I taste tea’, so that’s what we did.” Created to offer a Cornish alternative to Yorkshire Tea, and blended based on Duncan and co’s own understanding of what they liked – rather than what they thought other people would think – it’s fair to say that Smugglers Brew has, from the outset, been a roaring success. Indeed, if you’re staying in one of Cornwall’s many luxury hotels, stopping for tea and a slice of cake at your favourite waterside restaurant, or nipping to the shop to top up your tea bags, you can’t miss the bold boxes of Smugglers Brew lining the shelves. And what better way to toast your favourite county, than with a proper cup of Cornish Tea?