Three decades in tea. The first one in his own name.

James Mackness began his life in tea in 1996. A young Englishman with technical training rather than an engineering degree, he had studied technical theater at Goldsmiths, University of London, and taught himself electronics through an amateur radio course. He arrived at Choice Organic Teas with the hands-on instincts to build what a tea facility needed, and he set about doing exactly that. He built the machinery from scratch, piece by piece.

But the longer he stood next to the leaf, the more the work shifted on him. The mechanics had answers. Tea did not. He wanted the harder problem. The intricacies of formulation, the long art of sourcing, the balancing of flavors on a knife's edge of completion, and the unrelenting obsession with quality that separates a fine tea from a forgettable one.

The engineering side never left him. Over the decades that followed, he built out a full machine shop, machined parts to specification, programmed control systems for production lines (PLCs and HMIs), and constructed entire production machines from first principles for the tea facilities he ran. James has manufactured for and consulted to the brands you already know but cannot name. His work is the quiet reason a cup tastes the way it does. Saint Graal is the first tea he is making in his own name, and the first to carry his standard without compromise.