Pollards Coffee

Pollards is a coffee house first — its own home page opens with the line that it has been roasting coffee since 1879 — and that is exactly why its tea shelf is worth the walk down Ecclesall Road. A merchant who buys green coffee by grade buys tea the same way, and the catalogue shows it: black teas are split by origin, Ceylon is split again by district, and there is a separate drawer for green and semi-fermented leaf. Nothing on the list is a house blend with a clever name.

The shop itself is small: 627 Ecclesall Road, a counter rather than a hall, and the contact page warns that someone often works there alone. What it carries is disproportionate to its size. Kenya, Rwanda, Keemun, Nilgiri-style Indian leaf, Russian Caravan, Irish Breakfast, a Darjeeling in three grades, a Japanese genmaicha with puffed rice, an Iron Buddha oolong, a Pai Mu Tan white and a pu-erh all sit on the same list, and every one of them is priced from a 125 g bag up to a full kilo.

Two details make it the practical choice for a Sheffield cupboard. The first is the ladder: every price doubles cleanly from 125 g to 250 g to 500 g to a kilo, so a tea you like costs the same per gram whether you are testing it or committing to it. The second is quieter — Pollards leaf turns up on other Sheffield shelves, including the refill shop on Abbeydale Road, which means the city's cheapest everyday tea and its deepest tea list come out of the same roastery.