|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| Tea Together is a small hands-on operation that straddles the Atlantic. Its roots are in a leafy London suburb in the mid fifties and a group of girls who played together after school. One of those girls grew up to be a linguist, first in Switzerland, then onto Italy and then in New York City with the United Nations. The other studied painting, made films about artists, married a film cameraman and eventually went to live with her family in a farmhouse in the North of France. There, she discovered to her astonishment that her destiny was not, in fact, to make films but to make marmalades. A chance jar of her early efforts happened to fall into the hands of Joanna in Manhattan, who was thinking about what she might do after her early retirement from the UN. She tried the contents of the jar and called her old friend, some twenty years out of contact, to offer her services as distributor-promoter of Tea Together in the United States. Like it says on the box: Tea Together, St. Remy au Bois - Manhattan. |  Tea Together in the mid 1950’s: On left, Judith; on Right, Joanna |
 Statue in Gramercy Park |
 War Memorial in St.Remy-au-Bois |
Organic or Not Organic? |
|
| Tea Together went organic not long after making our first jams. We were using whole fruit for our marmalades and searching out non-treated oranges and lemons. It wasn't long before we realised that fully organic fruit was simpler to source, and tasted better. From here, it was logic that impelled us to become a completely organic label, with exceptions made only for our wild fruit that is picked from our local hedgerows. The sugar we use is always the same, unbleached cane sugar. Don't mention so-called Low Sugar Jams when you talk to Tea Together's: we know that in practice this means using industrially produced sugar substitutes or fruit sugar to flash | that seductive Low Sugar label . We are convinced that simple is always best, and that when it comes to sweet things, nothing is AS good as plain, straightforward and unabashed pure cane sugar, used in the minimal ratio of 40 percent sugar to 60 percent fruit before cooking Used this way, sugar conserves the jam without need of industrial helpers to preserve, set, firm, gel and all the rest of it. And it tastes right. Our whole operation is closely monitored by the wildly pernickety Ecocert France, whose logo on all our organic labels bears witness to the purity of the product. |
The Two Tea Togethers |
|
| In France : the French side of Tea Together is in the village of St. Remy au Bois, that lies between the walled city of Montreuil sure Mer and the wild coastline of the Baie de Somme in the north of France. This is where the jams and marmalades are made, in an atelier, which forms one side of a perfectly rectangular closed courtyard, typical of the farms in the north of France. Here simplicity is the operative word : a line of gas burners on inox tables, big copper basins, and a wild garden patrolled by geese that provides the angelica and the lavender that goes into some of the seasonal jams.
|
In Manhattan: Tea Together USA is downtown and overlooks one of Manhattan’s oldest garden squares. From here, Joanna D'Angelo oversees the importing and distribution of the whole range of Tea Together products. The jams and marmalades have become the core of a focused range of products that the two Tea Together’s have sourced from around the world; products made in the same spirit, with the same outlook, and the same artisanal quality. |
| top ^ |