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The winners of The Tea Guild's Top Tea Awards will be announced this week

9th April 2010

When it comes to tea, April is the most important month of the year. Why? It's when The Tea Guild hand out their prestigious awards for the UK's Top Tea Places!

As the organisation representing over 100 of the UK's most prestigious tea places, only the cream of Britain’s tea rooms are invited to join The Tea Guild. The Guild encourages its members to constantly strive for standards of excellence (something that, before The Tea Guild was founded in 1985, was found to be lacking!) and helps promote them and the luxurious ritual of taking afternoon tea nationwide. Today The Guild is on hand to ensure that wherever you see their stylish Art Deco-style logo you can be guaranteed a delicious cup of tea. The Top Tea awards are a way of recognising the very best places to take afternoon tea in the UK.

In London a venue will join the storied ranks of The Dorchester, The Lanesborough and Browns Hotel to be crowned The Tea Guild’s Top London Afternoon Tea 2010 while tea rooms nationwide will wait with baited breath to see who will be named The Tea Guild’s Top Tea Place 2010.

Along with the prizes for Top London Afternoon Tea and Top Tea Place (awarded to tea rooms) The Tea Guild has also created a brand new prize, The Tea Guild’s Top City and Country Hotel Tea Award, which will be presented to a hotel outside London (either in an urban or rural setting) for the first time in 2010.

Irene Gorman, Head of The Tea Guild, reveals why the time was right to bring in this new category. “Although The Tea Guild has a huge London membership there are also so many hotels outside the capital and now is the right time to recognise this!” Taking afternoon tea in a country house hotel, or indeed a sleek city boutique hotel, is a growing pastime and the market is currently expanding (despite our recent recession!). It’s the perfect time for The Tea Guild to celebrate this trend but Irene continues, “There is also a huge awareness of afternoon tea within the hotel business and hotels are keen to sharpen up their offer. Food and beverage managers all want to serve excellent afternoon tea and we found that they are often very knowledgeable about tea.”

For the hotels dotted around the country, it’s an exciting time. We can’t wait to see who will win the inaugural award! As with previous winners of the existing Top Tea categories, all 2010’s winners will be guaranteed a brilliant year.

The huge levels of media coverage surrounding the competition will bring in plenty of new business as Roy Hayward, owner of 2009’s Top Tea Place winner, The Bridge Tea Rooms in Bradford-upon-Avon, discovered. “Winning The Top Tea Award was such a privilege and being acknowledged by an organization as important and influential as The UK Tea Council’s Tea Guild was a massive achievement for us.” The Bridge saw an instant and marked increase in trade after winning Top Tea 2009 with visitors from around the world keen to experience the UK’s best afternoon tea. “Even if they hadn’t intended to visit a tea room during their time in Bradford-upon-Avon, having the UK’s Top Tea Place as an option isn’t a chance you turn down,” Roy admits.

In London, it was a similar success story. Since winning the Top London Tea Award in 2009, Leyla Mussaud, Manager of the hotel’s English Tea Room found that business received a big boost with bookings up by a massive 25%! An extra 10-20 covers are now needed for each sitting and Leyla has found that, “potential guests use the internet to search for the best afternoon tea in London.” Browns, as winner of Top London Afternoon Tea, is often first to appear on a Google search so guests have been flocking to the hotel since it was named as London’s finest.

But how are the winners chosen? Undercover inspectors visit all The Tea Guild’s members to ensure the high standards expected of the Guild are being met. The judges, who have all had long and illustrious careers in the tea industry, mark the members on categories including the venues’ ambience, cleanliness, food and service. As well as having real passion for afternoon tea, the inspectors also have excellent palettes and in-depth tea-tasting knowledge (honed during their time in the industry) so are able to appreciate the delicate nuances that contribute to making a perfect cup. The teas tasted on each visit are marked on liquor appearance, temperature, flavour and strength. Venues can be visited up to three times to check that service is consistent.

The winner of The Tea Guild’s Top London Tea will be announced on Tuesday 13th at 11am. Thursday 15th April sees the Top City and Country Hotel winner awarded at 11am while The Top Tea Place winner will be presented with their award at 11am on Friday 16th April.

Come back to see who has scooped the awards!

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• Find out more about the Tea Guild
• Take a Tea Masterclass, and learn how to be a tea specialist
• Top Tea Places 2009
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