A blend before it is a brand story
The tea used in PG Tips has long been imported as estate teas from around the world and blended into what has been known as blend 777, with the mix varying by season and sometimes drawing on a wide range of estate teas. That matters more than most corporate reshuffling, although there has been plenty of that too. Brooke Bond merged with Liebig in 1968 to become Brooke Bond Liebig, and Unilever acquired the business in 1984. Today, PG Tips is manufactured by Lipton Teas and Infusions, a company spun off from Unilever in 2021. In other words, the packet has travelled through several boardrooms, while the basic British expectation has remained much the same: make a cup that tastes like tea, not warm regret.
From Manchester to the tea cupboard
The roots of PG Tips run back to Brooke Bond, the tea business associated with Arthur Brooke. Brooke was born in Ashton-under-Lyne, and in 1869 he opened his first teahouse at 23 Market Street in Manchester. That Manchester connection is not just decorative. Brooke Bond’s Trafford Park factory, near Manchester, has been tied to PG Tips production since the brand’s launch in 1930. Trafford Park was a suitably industrial place for a product that became deeply domestic, which is very British if you think about it: large-scale blending and factory work, all in service of someone standing in slippers asking if anyone else wants one.
Pre-Gest-Tea, which was never going to stay on the packet
PG Tips began life in 1930 under the name Pre-Gest-Tea, a name that suggested it could be drunk before eating as a digestive aid. Grocers and salesmen shortened it to PG, because even in the 1930s people had limits. After the Second World War, labelling rules made that sort of digestive claim unsuitable, and by 1950 to 1951 the PG name had been formally adopted. The “Tips” part refers to the top two leaves and bud of the tea plant, a neat bit of tea language that survived the more dubious health implication. Corporate naming departments may come and go, but common sense occasionally wins.
The adverts everyone remembers, even if they pretend not to
For many British shoppers, PG Tips is not only a box of tea bags. It is also television memory. In 1956, the brand began using anthropomorphic chimpanzees in adverts, known as the Tipps family, and the campaign became one of those odd national reference points that seemed to live in every sitting room. The chimp adverts ran until January 2002, with celebrity voices along the way including Peter Sellers, Donald Sinden and Bob Monkhouse. Later, the brand was also associated with the knitted sock Monkey character. None of this improves the tea in the cup, strictly speaking, but it does explain why a packet of PG Tips can feel oddly familiar before the kettle has even boiled.
Tea bags, pyramids, and the eternal British mug
PG Tips has also been part of the changing shape of the British tea bag. PG Tags, with a string for mug use, arrived in 1985. The pyramid-shaped bags followed in 1996, promoted as giving tea leaves more room to move. More recently, PG Tips introduced a quick-brew square tea bag intended to brew faster, replacing the pyramid bags. Tea drinkers can be surprisingly loyal to a shape of bag, which sounds absurd until you remember that Britain has had serious household discussions about milk order, mug size and whether one bag can do two cups. It usually cannot, but someone’s uncle will insist otherwise.
A familiar box, a long way from home
For British expats in Canada, PG Tips Gold is less about novelty and more about restoring a small domestic setting. It belongs with biscuit tins, grandparents’ cupboards, corner-shop habits and parcels from home that arrive looking slightly battered but emotionally important. A box of 70 tea bags is practical, but it is also a little signal: the tea shelf is behaving properly again. For those in Halifax, Dartmouth, Toronto, Calgary or anywhere else the weather has opinions of its own, this is the sort of brew that helps a kitchen feel more like the one you remember. Quietly stocked for homesick kettles by The Great British Shop.
