People often tell us they’d love to be one of our expert tea buyers – tasting tea, all day every day. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.

In order to make Yorkshire Tea, our tea buyers taste hundreds of teas every single day.

Sometimes it’s to make sure the tea in our factory has been blended correctly. Other times it’s to taste advance samples of teas from around the world so we can see who’s growing the best quality tea.

Whatever the reason, each day, row after row of cups filled with precision-brewed teas are lined up in the tasting room waiting for our tea buyers to dip in their tasting spoons and slurp.

And we do mean ‘slurp’.

Here's Suzy, tasting with our Head of Tea, Ian

Crazy though it seems, this slurping is very important. It ensures the tea fully sprays the tastebuds and fills the mouth - try it for yourself and you’ll soon see you pick up far more flavour.

So it’s always busy in our tea room. But last week was particularly hectic.

At the start of the week, we received a huge number of teas to sample, with only a few days to taste them all before deciding which ones to buy. In fact, on Wednesday, our tea buyers tasted 900 different teas in a single day – a new company record.

It’s hard to imagine how they managed really. But somehow the whole team pulled together to taste the lot.

It took its toll, however: sore tongues, cramp, you name it. “I actually got a stitch from slurping,” says Suzy.

Thankfully no-one was permanently injured – but we’d be surprised if any of them put the kettle on when they got home that day!