The Bigelow Tea Company (formerly R.C. Bigelow, Inc.) is an American manufacturer of dried teas based in

Fairfield, Connecticut Fairfield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It borders the city of Bridgeport and towns of Trumbull, Easton, Weston, and Westport along the Gold Coast of Connecticut. Located within the New York metropolitan ar ...

. It was founded by Ruth C. Bigelow in 1945, based on a recipe she marketed as "Constant Comment" tea. The company markets over 50 varieties of tea, including

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...

green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a combin ...

, and herbal, all of which are blended in Fairfield. The company has other plants in

Boise, Idaho Boise (, , ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho and is the county seat of Ada County. On the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, it is east of the Oregon border and north of the Nevada border. The downtown ar ...

, and

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

. Their Charleston Tea Garden in

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is the only tea garden in America, but does not produce the "Bigelow Tea Company" teas. Still a 100% family-owned business,"Hoovers article on R.C. Bigelow, Inc."
Accessed in 2010. It lists David Bigelow and Eunice Bigelow as Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs, and Cynthia Bigelow as President. Bigelow employs 350 people and had annual sales in 2020 of approximately US$188.9 million.

Constant Comment

Constant Comment remains today one of Bigelow Inc.'s most popular products. It is a

black tea Black tea, also translated to red tea in various East Asian languages, is a type of tea that is more oxidized than oolong, yellow, white and green teas. Black tea is generally stronger in flavour than other teas. All five types are made from ...

flavored with

orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

rinds and sweet spices. The recipe was developed by interior designer Ruth Bigelow in 1945, from an old colonial tea recipe for making orange and spice flavored tea in stone containers. In 1945, ''The New York Times'' food writer Jane Holt wrote about the newly introduced tea, calling it "unusual", "delicious", "concentrated", and "economical": A 1945 article by noted food writer

Clementine Paddleford Clementine Paddleford (September 27, 1898 – November 13, 1967) was an American food writer active from the 1920s through the 1960s, writing for several publications, including the New York ''Herald Tribune'', the ''New York Sun'', '' The New ...

tells this story about the origin of the name: Sales grew slowly but steadily, taking off in the 1970s when Bigelow began packing their teabags in folding

cardboard Cardboard is a generic term for heavy paper-based products. The construction can range from a thick paper known as paperboard to corrugated fiberboard which is made of multiple plies of material. Natural cardboards can range from grey to light b ...

boxes instead of tins. According to singer-songwriter

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death, and romantic relationships. He was inducted in ...

, the famous lines, "and she feeds you tea and oranges / that come all the way from China", from his first hit song " Suzanne", refer to Constant Comment tea. The tea also gets a mention in the 1977 children's novella 'Mildred Murphy, how does your Garden Grow?' by Phyllis Green in which " ildred'sloneliness disappears when hebefriends a secretive woman living in a condemned garage" who is fond of the tea. In 2016, CEO Cindi Bigelow said of the recipe for Constant Comment: "the only two people who know the formula are my parents uth Bigelow's son David, Jr. and his wife and that the recipe remains unchanged from the original since it was first developed.

References

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External links

Official WebsiteBigelow Tea Blog
Companies based in Fairfield County, Connecticut Tea brands in the United States Fairfield, Connecticut Tea companies of the United States Certified B Corporations in the Food & Beverage Industry Family-owned companies of the United States

Constant Comment

See also

References

External links