To truly experience teatime like an aristocrat, you’ll want to sip on The Rubens Golden Tips Tea while looking out over The Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace
At the swanky Rubens at the Palace, a pot of said tea is priced at a cool £500 (Php 31,319.00), making it the most expensive tea in the United Kingdom. To make your money’s worth, you’ll get a glass of champagne, freshly baked scones, an assortment of pastries and elegant finger sandwiches to go with it.
Why the extravagant price tag? The hotel’s spokesman explained that Golden Tips tea is not only rare, but its production is entirely natural and, thus, slow. Few estates plant these bushes, which must be tended to for about seven years before their silvery buds yield mature, fuzzy tips that are ripe for the picking.
See also: A Look Inside Estée Lauder & Malaysia Tatler's Colourful High Tea Party
This slow growth can be attributed to the cool climate of the Sri Lankan highlands where the tea is grown. The mild weather translates to a longer time for flavour to develop on the bush. When ready, only the fine tips are picked and then sundried on a swathe of velvet cloth until they turn from silver to gold. After that, it’s off to market.
The premium also stems from the fact that it takes five kilograms of buds to yield a single kilogram of the tea. To put its rarity in perspective, out of Sri Lanka’s annual production of 300 million kilograms of tea, less than 100 kilograms comprise the Golden Tips variety—even less after the tips are sifted and the less-than-excellent among them eliminated.