Harney and Sons Tea

20 count box(es) of Harney and Sons English Breakfast Tea wholesale price: $4.49	English Breakfast
20 count box(es) of Harney and Sons Organic Peppermint Herbal wholesale price: $5.09	Organic Peppermint Herbal

Harney & Sons has been in the business of gourmet tea for over 25 years. Harney & Sons makes their teas for the enjoyment of our customers and take pride in meeting and exceeding their expectations from every cup of tea. Harney & Sons selection is large, and includes many customer favorites including green tea, black tea, and white tea.

It was 25 years ago that John Harney made the decision to found Harney & Sons. He had worked for others all of his life and felt (at the age of 53) it was time to run his own show. Since he had worked with Stanley Mason at Sarum Tea for 13 years, he understood the basics of tea. However "tea" back then was much different. China had opened only recently and there few teas coming out there in 1983. So Taiwan was the source of the basic "Chinese" teas: Gunpowder, Oolongs, and keemun. These teas did not taste like the real thing, but rather, were a version. The Taiwanese had not yet begun to make the great greenish oolongs that they do today. India's teas were still strongly influenced by the British, so Darjeelings and Assams were dark and monotone, just right for milk and sugar. The Indians had only just begun to experiment with changing style of teas to make the teas taste more seasonal and more flavorful. Japan kept its Senchas to themselves. So back in 1983, the tea world did not offer many great teas. And that was fine, because few people drank tea. How that has changed, and for the better.

Here's an article from The New York Times from Decemeber 1990 about Harney and Sons:
A Delicate Blend of Business and Family
By Valerie Cruice
Published: December 30, 1990

JOHN HARNEY plunged his hands into a wooden chest full of pungent dried yellow flowers, cupping his hands and sniffing.

"Chamomile," he said. "It's very popular. We sell an awful lot of it. It's grown in three places: Egypt, Iran and Hungary. You don't buy Iranian now. And because of Chernobyl, you'd glow if you drank the Hungarian. So we stick with the Egyptian."

Mr. Harney, a 60-year-old Salisbury resident, is a master tea blender whose skills recently earned him two gold medals from the Chefs in America Association. His seven-year-old company, Harney and Sons, has tripled its business in the last two years alone, he said, and supplies tea to concerns like Williams-Sonoma and the Ritz Carlton Hotels.

For the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, Mr. Harney provides a tea called "The Palm Court," a blend of Assam, Ceylon, Keemun and Formosa oolong. Mr. Harney said that each week, the Plaza's guests consume 3,600 cups of the blend named after the hotel's restaurant. 19th-Century House

"It's the most popular tea the Plaza has now," he said. "It outsells Earl Grey," which is usually the most requested tea.

Mr. Harney's company operates out of the family's home on East Main Street in Salisbury, near the White Hart Inn, which he owned with partners from 1960 to 1983. Mr. Harney, whose parents operated three hotels in Vermont, earned a degree in hotel administration at Cornell University and held management posts at a number of hotels.

On the left side of the 1810 white-clapboard house is a real-estate office operated by Mr. Harney's wife, Elyse. On the right side is Mr. Harney's showroom-office, where tea tins share shelf space with teapots and strainers, and a computer is manned by Mr. Harney's son and partner, Michael, 35.

Through a great room with a giant hearth, and down a hall to the kitchen, a row of elegant wooden boxes with engraved brass plates saying "Ritz Carlton" awaited packing and shipping to the company's hotels in California, Massachusetts and Florida.

"These tea chests are used for afternoon teas at the Ritz Carltons," Mr. Harney said. "They each display four cans of tea at a time. We have 12 different teas -- nine regular and three herbal."

Beyond the kitchen and down four steps was the heart of the operation, where two women in aprons busily measured and packed orders destined for Hawaii, Bermuda, New York, Chicago and Santa Fe, N.M. Wooden chests filled with 60 to 100 pounds of tea lined the walls.

Tucked under the central work table were huge cans, whose lids showed a circle of markered and crossed-off dates. "Every time we blend, it takes four to five weeks," said Mr. Harney, lifting a lid. "We infuse flavor into tea instead of spraying it," a popular practice.

Earl Grey tea gets its flavor from the oil of the bergamot, a small citrus fruit grown in the Mediterranean, he said. "It becomes the basis for many perfumes. It's marvelous."

Some of the more exotic oils Mr. Harney uses to flavor his teas include passion fruit, mango, orange, caramel and even vanilla. A restaurant in Santa Fe goes through 500 gallons a week of Mr. Harney's vanilla iced tea, he said.

"Just for kicks, let's open our new Irish breakfast," he said, pivoting a spoon and popping the lid off a can. "It's very clean smelling. It's Assam, an Indian tea. A breakfast tea has to be strong and fairly heavy in caffeine," he said.

"We have a great market for loose leaf," he said, replacing the lid. "People are going back to it." 'The Irish Invented It'

But tea bags are still popular. While Mr. Harney estimates that 20 percent of his business is in loose-leaf tea and 15 percent in the oversized bags for iced tea, the rest of his sales are standard-size tea bags.

"Tea bags really started in 1904," he said. "The Irish invented it. A tea merchant named Sullivan was sending out samples. He put it in little silken pouches, and people started ordering them that way. In France, you buy linen tea bags. In Sweden, they're nylon."

Mr. Harney's tea is bagged in paper, he said, and he offers a wooden chest to display the bags in restaurants and stores.

Out of 21 varieties of tea that Mr. Harney offers, seven are decaffeinated or herbal. He noted that many people believe the myth that tea contains more caffeine than coffee.

"A cup of the strongest, blackest tea will still only have 25 percent of the caffeine in a cup of coffee," he said.

Michael Harney said: "The way to decaffeinate tea yourself is to put a tea bag in for five seconds, and toss that water out and start over. Most of the caffeine comes out then, because it is more water soluble than the flavor." 'A Lot of Laughs'

John Harney said he learned the art of tea from a British master blender who had a country house in Salisbury. When Harney and Sons opened in 1983, "we had no customers and no money," said Mr. Harney. His wife took time out from her real-estate business to help, and all five of the couple's children are involved in some capacity.

"A lot of people don't enjoy working with their kids," said Mr. Harney. But for him, "it's been a lot of fun, a lot of laughs."

Michael Harney and his father frequently travel together, visiting customers and checking on how their tea is prepared and served. They said they keep their thermometers at the ready.

"We always check the temperature of the water," John Harney said. "Often you see 140 degrees. It should be 212 degrees -- boiling temperature at sea level."