Search

INGENUI-TEA: Rosevear tea works to bring loose leaf tea forward

Maria Gran
Apr 16, 2018
3 min read

Opened just over two years ago, Rosevear tea is one of the newer additions to the Edinburgh tea-scene. Now, the shop has two stores, one on Bruntsfield Place and one on Broughton Street, and sells almost 100 different teas.

Adam Rosevear, along with his wife Isabelle, founded the shop because, in Adam’s words, they are “crazy about tea”. After meeting each other at university in Edinburgh, they travelled to and lived in many countries that either grow tea or have their own traditions relating to tea. When moving back to Edinburgh, they missed the variety of loose leaf tea available.

“We’ve always been surrounded by tea. When we met at university we were drinking tea, and it’s just continued. Because loose leaf tea is exploding around the world, we took the chance to open a tea shop,” explains Adam.

Clearly, just one tea shop wasn’t enough. Just six months after starting up in Bruntsfield, the Broughton Street store came to life. Adam admits it was a little soon, but it has worked out nonetheless.

“We always wanted to open in Broughton Street, it’s the perfect area for a tea shop. Nothing was available, so when one did become available we had to go for it even if it was a little bit sooner than we wanted to. But it’s working really well.”

However, loose leaf tea is not the most trendy product in the UK, at least not yet. While shops in Australia, France, Germany and Canada have experienced an increase in the popularity of loose leaf tea, the UK is lagging.

“Loose leaf tea is something that people of a grandparent age were drinking all the time. Although tea bags were already invented, they started to be used a lot in the sixties because of ease. There is still a huge consumption of tea bags, but the consumption of tea started to fall because it’s not an aspirational drink as it’s so easy to make,” Adam explains. He draws parallels to coffee, where we are starting to step away from instant coffee and more independent coffee shops are opening.

“Elsewhere in the world, tea is coming up. The tea consumption is exploding there, and it hasn’t done this yet in the UK. We have David Attenborough helping us by pointing out that tea bags have plastic in them that is harming the fish, and of course us. The wind is behind loose leaf tea, so it’s the moment to be in the tea business,” Adam says assuringly.

What has held Britain back, Adam thinks, is the view that loose tea is a ‘grandparent drink’. Because of this, there has been little interest in loose leaf tea, but Adam says that by having a tea shop, he has been able to reach out to people.

“Our sales are up strongly, so it is working. And the Attenborough thing has also made an enormous effect. We were already doing something for the environment as people can reuse their own containers in our shop, and it’s absolutely in line of the way things are going now,” Adam says.

Adam seems to have thoroughly enjoyed his two years of promoting loose leaf teas. As well as sparing the environment from tea bags, he has been able to meet tea enthusiasts and serve many different kinds of tea.

“My favourite drink is tea, my favourite music is jazz, and everyone that visits the shop is nice. We never have someone unpleasant come in. I spend my whole day talking about tea, it’s great.”