If you were the recipient of our May ‘Cupán Tae’ box, you will probably remember the lovely Flowering Tea Bud and Earl Grey Leaf Tea from Solaris Tea. We caught up with Joerg from Solaris Tea, to tell us more about their beautiful blends and business journey.
Could you share with us a little bit about your business and the products you make?
At Solaris, we are a family business established by husband and wife: Jörg and Karin Müller, two qualified Medical Herbalists (BScHons). Based in Galway by the rugged shoreline of Ireland's West coast, Solaris specialises in the blending and preparation of International Award Winning Whole-Leaf Organic Teas.
In our early twenties, during our herbal medicine degree, we dreamt up, and blended our first perfect cup of herbal tea. The local coffee shop tried and tested our creations and these original virgin blends soon outsold their coffee offerings.
Similarly, our tea-sampling evenings became a regular fix with friends. One evening, after relishing in thirty varieties of Organic Jasmine tea from small hand-picked tea plantations, conversation took on a new level of poetry and a dream was born. We decided to share our passion with the world. Our dream became reality in 2003 when our business was established. Our goal was to provide customers with delicious tasting and health promoting organic herbal teas, free from artificial flavourings and other additives.
From its humble beginnings, hand blending small batches of herbal teas in our converted attic, our range expanded to meet customer demand.
We started out delivering to small independent health stores and coffee shops. With limited resources at the time, each delivery was an experience in itself. A vivid memory is Joerg standing at the roadside waiting for the no 33 bus, expertly manoeuvring an oversized trolley containing our first tea deliveries.
Capacity issues required similar flexibility. Once our sitting-room reached full capacity with ceiling-high stacks of herbs and spices, we decided enough is enough and took the leap to move into our current warehouse and blending rooms in 2005.
It was around then that we decided to pitch ourselves against the greater world of speciality tea. Over the next 3 years we were the proud recipients of 13 Great Taste Awards, secured the Best Irish Organic Grocery Award twice and won the Eurotoque 2010 awards for an outstanding contribution to Irish cuisine.
On the business side of things our innovative spirit was rewarded by becoming semi-finalists in the world wide young entrepreneurs award.
As the business grew so did our highly skilled and motivated team which has matured over the years providing the corner stones for our company.
Is there a story behind the name of your brand?
Solaris is the Latin word for the sun. The brand name originated from the word Soluna, representing the forces of light and darkness at work in the plant kingdom. Our original signature tea blends took as inspiration the unique planetary constellations and their relationship to plants and how they correlate to the human body organs. Having studied both Medieval, Greek & Oriental herbal plant lore, as well as modern western Herbal Medicine, we wanted a brand name that reflects the fusion of traditional & modern herbal wisdom.
As Albert Einstein said:
'Look deep into nature and you will understand everything better'
Could you please give me. But more information. Is this a subscription order?
Can you please share more information about the products you sell and the prices. I absolutely love the beautiful glass tea cup I come to Ireland almost every year we had to cancel this year dumped to to the Coronavirus virus. I already made my plans for 15 days for in May/ June 2021 🙏🙏☘️
I would love to meet you and see your products in person as well.
Thank you for helping me. I do love my tea and Irish shortbread cookies. Hope to hear from you soon and hopefully see everything in person
Blessings!