Fortnum & Mason the take time for tea hamper
Best: Overall
Rating: 10/10
Fortnum & Mason is the high temple of tea, having sold it from their London Piccadilly store since the early 18th-century and famously created a bespoke blend for King Edward VII in 1902. Its wicker hampers packed with teatime goodies have now become iconic and are the ultimate way to spoil any real tea obsessive this Christmas.
This one is the ideal way to bring serious luxury to the most important ritual of the day. It features six covetable tins of Fortnum’s celebrated loose-leaf teas including our favourite, Darjeeling BOP, Earl Grey and the Royal Blend. There’s also a three-minute tea timer and a traditional tea strainer to guarantee the perfect cuppa, every time.
Of course, no proper tea break is complete without biscuits so the hamper includes a tin of melt-in-the-mouth pistachio and clotted cream biscuits. There’s also a huge selection tin of Fortnum’s butter biscuits in stem ginger, salted caramel, macadamia nut, lemon curd, fruit and nut flapjack and chocolate pearl flavours. Spoiler alert: they might be the best biscuits we’ve ever tasted.
Finally, there’s a teeny Fortnum’s bag of Countess Grey tea caramel truffles and even a copy of Tom Parker Bowles’ entertaining guide to tea, Time for Tea (£14.99, Amazon.co.uk). If all that doesn’t thrill the tea lover in your life, we’d start to suspect they secretly prefer coffee.