TAKING tea with Roy Pierce is the equivalent of drinking fine wine with Jilly Goolden. It’s a serious business.

After weighing just the right amount of dry tea leaves on a set of small brass scales, freshly boiled water is added and then left to infuse for exactly six minutes.

Before he tastes the tea, Roy scrutinises the wet leaves and swirls the hot liquid around several times before sucking it quickly into his mouth and spitting it out again.

“I never get bored of drinking tea,” he says, which is just as well considering he has been in the business for nearly 60 years.

His palate is so refined that he can distinguish the tiniest differences between teas – even if he tastes two batches from the same estate.

For Roy, 73, has been involved in every aspect of the industry from cleaning out the spittoons at the age of 15 to working in quality control and marketing in Africa.

He eventually set up his own business in 1990 importing fresh teas and tisanes with his sister Tina, who shares her brother’s passion for Britain’s best-loved brew.

“There is a lot involved,” says Tina, 76. “It takes up to seven years to become a full qualified tea taster – no two cups of tea are the same, in the same way that no two bottles of wine are the same.”

When they launched their business called Blendings, they knew just where to begin – 6,000 ft up on the slopes of Mount Kenya.

“Kenyan tea is one of the best teas in the world, grown in the perfect climate in rich soil. It gives a full-bodied infusion and no bitter aftertaste,” explains Roy.

“We decided from the outset that we wanted to provide a high quality product at a reasonable price – you pay for the tea not the packaging.”

Tina recalls how they used to visit all the local markets, craft fairs and agricultural shows armed with water and an electric kettle “pouring cups of tea for anyone who wanted to try it”.

“We were in a middle of a recession at the time so it wasn’t easy but we gradually managed to build it up and now we have customers as far away as Hawaii.”

And 21 years later the brother and sister team, who live in Lower Parkstone, haven’t lost any of their passion for a good cuppa.

“You can’t beat a good cup of tea – I drink it at any time of day!”

Tina, a former university lecturer who worked in Sweden for 33 years, still gives talks to local groups.

“Tea is part of our English heritage. It is even part of our language - we talk about a storm in a tea cup or something not being quite our cup of tea!”

And Roy, who resisted tea bags for years, makes just one exception. “The tea bag does not do justice to the large leaf speciality teas like Darjeeling and Earl Grey so we have chosen a high quality Kenyan tea.”

But although they are still in good health – which they attribute to their tea drinking habit pointing out that it is full of antioxidants – they are hoping to find someone to take on the business.

“It would be nice to put our feet up now,” adds Roy. With a good cup of Kenyan tea, of course.