History of Ceylon Teas

Certain characteristics which have determined the way in which the production of tea has developed on the Island. These aspects have included not only the extremes of climate but also the physical nature of the countryside. Here is a breakdown of some of those influences.

The early development of this island was one reliant on agriculture. Early chronicles relate to the coming of an early civilisation over 2,500 years ago, which settled in the North and Eastern sector of the country. A relatively low lying area, that is fairly arid. In order to establish the two big cities of that time, it was necessary to construct some amazing feats of engineering in cutting canals to divert the great Mahaweli river that rises in the tea hills of to-day and meanders to Trincomalee harbour.

This development was possible because of the existence of very advanced engineering skills that only to-day are being understood fully with large scale excavations that were started in the British period by amateurs and now using international funds. The first skill base was the ability to cut and divert waters via canals that ran to very fine fall levels, something that can only be achieved with advanced technology to-day. It is still not fully understood how this was managed. Acquisition of the skill to construct a  ‘Biso-kotuwa’, this was a rock sluice. The whole area is covered in ‘tanks’ (dams) that received the water from the diverting canals and then held it until released via the sluice system into further delivery canals to the rice fields to grow the rice that was required to maintain this highly civilised society which developed and prospered. This complex society was based on a line of 123 kings, who used Tamil mercenaries to protect them from Tamil incursions, invading from India but which eventually weakened them and drove them successively South and finally to their final stand in the Kandyan hills. It is interesting to note that the first Tamil king appeared in 180 BC and that the last King who surrendered the Kandyan kingdom to the British in 1815 was of mixed Tamil and Sinhalese descent. This shows the involvement of the Jaffna Tamils who settled here at that time, having driven out this advanced society from their two great cities in the North East. Later I may mention the Tamils of the estates. The two communities are not the same. The later were encouraged to come by the British when large numbers of workers were required to clear and plant the plantations.

  The Portuguese came after the world famous spices, particularly Cinnamon in 1505. They were replaced by the Dutch in 1658 at the invitation of the King and finally the British in 1796 again at the invitation of the King.

We are unable to continue a history lesson here but hopefully this will help any readers not conversant with Ceylon (Sri Lankan) history, to understand the island and it’s people better than appears to be the case from comments over the last thirty years by media commentators and educational ‘experts’.

Let us now leave that era and propel ourselves into the 1800’s. Some of my ancestors arrived in the island with the Royal Artillery at the time of the war with the Dutch and initially most of the army was based in Colombo. Indeed the first James Blackett is recorded as being born in Colombo in 1808. By 1815 Kandy had been subdued with the help of one or two of the King’s dissenting ministers, his cruelty sickened many of the Sinhalese. Once it had been taken, enormous resources were put into cutting roads and building bridges. The highlands were a veritable natural fortress and certain passes had to be used to gain access, such as the famous road at Kadugannawa. The army were the obvious engineers for this development. James Blackett and Alexander Brown amongst others, were both involved in the roads and bridges from Gampola - Kandy - Peradeniya and then towards Pussellawa. By about 1826 The Public Works Department was in being and taking over from the army officers. It was also at this time that Col Bird looked at opening the first coffee plantation near Gampola. The de Soysa family were also planting coffee close to Kandy and these two were considered the first plantations in the island. The island had found a source of funds , through coffee expansion to pay for increasing development. The acreage was mushrooming at lightening speed.

• In 1837 there were 4,000 acres of coffee recorded
• In 1860 the records showed 40,000 acres and this peaked in about 1870

By 1865 a fungus had been observed which denuded the trees and planters planted further up, believing that they could escape it. With no Research Institute, disaster was on it's way. Some families like Alexander Brown had acquired some 30 estates by then. He was a successful partner in an agency, banking firm in Kandy named, Gerard Brown and Co. By 1873 he had lost all of this and clung on to one estate at the end, dying a broken man in 1876 being buried at Kandy. Many families were in the same position and their estates could not be given away. Blackett managed to hold on and many estates tried alternative crops, planting  Chinchona between the coffee. The price of Chinchona  eventually plummeted and other crops were being experimented with. Tea had been brought over from India as early as 1845 and was growing in a small plot at Pen-y-Lan. Blackett later used some of the seed from that plot, to replace his ailing coffee.

It is important to understand the progression within planting. In the early days of coffee planting, the planters purchased blocks of Crown lands from the government. These were usually blocks of either 50 acres or 100 acres. One such purchase document for Blackett shows just over 50 acres at £52 and then proceeds to describe the boundaries. You purchased all the goods you would need in Colombo for a long stay and proceeded with several bullock carts to the area in the hills. You recruited some labour and set-up small mud huts with thatched roofs. The owners quarters were the same as his workers, with one bed, a table and one chair. The hut was about 12 feet by 6 feet in size. Often that land was virgin jungle (forest), in hilly country with steep valleys. One system for clearing was to part cut the trees over the area and then the last line along the top of a hill were cut and toppled together. This created a toppling effect right down the hill side. Ideally you purchased your land next to a river for nursery work, however most estates have water springs that could have supplied water. Thus the early estates, names now swallowed up by larger estates and still referred to as divisions of an estate, were mostly about 100 to 200 acres. A large field might be 50 acres. One such estate called Le Vallon has six divisions: Le Vallon, New Forest, Galloway Knowe, Rajatalawa, Colgrain and Hermitage. All these are estates that appear in the old records. Hermitage had one field right at the top, near the rocky ridge now reverted to jungle with 30 foot tea trees. It is called Sweeting Kadu (jungle) to this day. I used to visit it out of curiosity, it was a difficult climb. The field below it pruned in the 1960’s, yielded some 12 to 18 snakes (vipers) being killed a day around the feet of the pruners. This was about average for each pruning season. So long as the assistant manager entered the field and pruned, the pruners completed their quota of bushes.

Many of the old letters and records from the families were lost or destroyed. Their lives were turned upside down in the 1860’s with the failing of coffee. However it has been generally accepted that James Taylor was probably the first person to plant a commercial area of tea and crop it. He planted No.7 field on Loolecondera estate with seed in 1867, some 19 acres in extent. He was a manager at the time earning £8-6-8d per month (£8-33p). There has been much discussion as to whether Nagastenne, Pen-y-Lan or Condegalla were the first places having tea. Until some family documents are found with any other evidence, it was James Taylor who was first. He was a huge man over 6 feet and 17.5 stone in weight. When he died in May 1892, his coffin was carried from the estate to the Mahaiyawa cemetery in Kandy where so many planting families are buried. Two gangs of twelve men from the estate took it in turns to carry him.

In those early days there grew up a respect between owner or manager and worker, both aiming at establishing a work for the future, never seen to-day. The progression of the European owner from mud hut to stone bungalow and many of them are stupendous memorials to that era of development, was viewed as a desirable confirmation of security for their own jobs and a place to raise families of their own. The men who carved these estates then were undoubtedly often correctly referred to as made of steel, hard working and hard drinking. The life moulded them and most of us cannot possibly comprehend what it was like. Men on their own thousands of miles from home building that future. Not even seeing others in the area maybe for a week, when a close camaraderie would flourish. From this harsh beginning flowered the beauty that is the estate of to-day and flourishing clubs for each area, fostering inter club rivalry at sport. The greatest rivalry was between up-country and Colombo (the agents).

Then in the middle of this struggle when men started to marry and have families, would come disease. Strolling through the cemeteries confirms how many children died in infancy. Then again in 1865 came disease for the coffee tree and the need to start again and build again. For those who hung on, it would have been heartbreaking to pull out their beloved coffee trees, clear again and hole the ground to take the new tea seed, establishing the hillsides in green again. After six generations of this, there is bound to be an amazing bond to the place. That era learnt many lessons without any doubt and those harsh experiences drove the future development of tea. After 1865 the establishment of the Planters Association and the Tea Research Institute (T.R.I) were both direct results of the trauma and pain of that time, never again would planters be left to watch helplessly as their lives work disintegrated before them.

 Tea:

Below is quoted an extract from De profundis - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that was specific to the heroics of the early Ceylon planters and the disasters that they overcame to mould the present industry to-day. It is often felt that planters made their fortunes and had an easy life. That only applied to planters after 1930 in my view. The reason for the statement was that in 1865 the coffee planters of Ceylon noted a leaf fungus appearing that caused the leaf to die and drop off, yields fell and trees died. This was the dreaded 'Hemileia Vastatrix', often known as 'Devastating Emily'. For a time planters planted at a faster rate to overcome it. As I have already stated there were no Research Institutes in those days. Then they sought other alternatives between the trees such as Chinchona. Some were looking at tea and by 1867 tea was being planted in fields, rather than trials. The reversal was dramatic as the extract relates. From utter despair and penury to endless green acres:

‘Those were the royal days of coffee planting in Ceylon, before a single season and a rotting fungus drove a whole community through years of despair to one of the greatest commercial victories which pluck and ingenuity ever won. Not often is it that men have heart when their one great industry is withered, to rear up in a few years another as rich to take its place, and the tea fields of Ceylon are as true a monument to courage as is the lion at Waterloo’         

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

 The reference to Waterloo brings to mind another connection with this event and the island. For both the victory of Waterloo and the final taking of Kandy and the island of Ceylon were both announced on the same day in the Gazette in London.

 Tea is usually stated to have been discovered as a drink by the Chinese. When is not certain but there is a story that would place it back some 3,000 years B.C. They always maintained that it was a health supporting drink. To-day scientists are trying to find the basis of that statement as with so many hunches from the past.

However, to return to the facts of the present. Tea or Camellia Sinesis was classified in planting terms into two main Jats (types).

1. The China  jat, a small leafed bush which is a tough leaf and in my opinion contributes to flavour.

2. The Assam  jat, a much larger fleshy leaf, tending to the look of modern VP clones, chosen initially for their yield and disease resistance rather than flavour.

Some observers would quote the Indo-China  jat as a third branch.

With the collapse of the coffee plantations in Ceylon in the 1860’s, families and interested parties imported both the Assam type from India and the China jat from china. Thus many of the estates have a mixture of original jats although the China was seen clearly in the low country.

From these two very different Jats, planters over the years have seen a number of other differences that might define a number of sub jats. It is usually supposed that these were mutations or types that had adapted to different elevations or climatic influences.

However the plantations of 130 to 150 years ago are wearing out fast with pressure to crop and yield and many thousands of acres have already been replanted. That process is continuing annually with re-investment programmes. A very costly exercise to-day.

The first plantations were Coffee and the land sold for 25p per acre, to £1 paid by my family for some land in 1853. By the time tea supplanted coffee, land was being given away. Costs of clearing the land and bringing tea into bearing were about £20 per acre.

To-day costs have soared out of all recognition and bear no resemblance to the price paid for tea. New clearings are deep forked by hand to eighteen inches. Cleaned by planting Guatemala grass for at least two years. Then planting takes place at about 5,300 plants per acre (13,500 per hectare), with VP clonal plants one year old, (A mother bush in the nursery supplies some 1,000 cuttings per annum). The plants are light pruned every six months to encourage width and brought into bearing at 2.5 to 3 years of age. In the 1990’a a loan scheme was introduced to help with the costs and approximately £400 per hectare was given for new land planted and about £500 for re-planting.  In 1997 an estimate was given that 55.5 % of all tea was new clonal planting and 45 % was tea planted between 1867 and 1954.

V.P. Clones:

The mother bushes for these were selected over the 1940’s to 1950’s. The TRI (Tea Research Institute) brought in the famous 2020 series as the main leaders. However individual estates selected their own and named them after Divisions and fields. The 2020 series are the main providers of material to-day. In my own opinion the selection was far too heavily in favour of yield. To-day some tea-makers will express concern over the 2025 as being too fleshy and difficult for orthodox rolling. I also believe that these heavy yielding clones are against flavour characteristics. I understand that there is some reappraisal going on and careful selection for the future is vital.

  To-day the estates have science applied to them, to cut cost and deliver cheap tea is the name of the game. It is now an ‘industry’ not a botanical extension of the planter and his family, even the present family owners have to bend to and be driven by science. The original dream and plan that those families laid is disappearing into the harsh economics of the twenty first century and undoubtedly we shall all be the poorer for that. The present day planters guard and cherish the T.R.I.. It is recognised to-day as a leading Research Institute and has undoubtedly been of enormous support and help to estates.

So it was with the ending of the 2nd. World War that economic change began to set in. Agency houses and capital from London required that ever greater yields and more efficiency should be sought. Machines were sought to take-over where possible.

 The first tea that was produced in the 1860’s was literally rolled by hand or arm, on bungalow verandah floors, or on tables and then fired over charcoal fires. Then came various developments in machines to roll the leaf and apply the required twist from Brown and others. Since the first leaves were plucked in 1867 to about 1965, virtually all leaf was rolled either by hand or developing machines. The twist of the leaf was always important. However since about the 1950’s an invention which minces the leaf or perhaps rips and tears the leaf was developed to a point where it could make tea. Depending on which side of the technological divide that one stands on, depends on how much one accepts this product as ‘real tea’. The fact that the new machine cuts the leaf up at one point means that it cannot be used to produce small leaf as well as medium grade leaf and finally the huge Orange Pekoe and Pekoe grades. So it was able to produce tea in sizes between Dust and BOPF, not a very wide range of operation. Thus there was no official grade system attached to this manufacture. Most of the leaf which was a strong colour and strong in leaf chemicals because of the number of cells ruptured, was used in the great invention, ‘the tea bag’. A world that was being driven ever faster and faster with little time to stop and think found the tea bag a boon. It brewed whatever you did to it. As with all such things, having saturated the market, the pendulum is beginning to swing to common sense again. Consumers are realising that it becomes a bit boring when this form of tea can only deliver a limited amount of variation in colour or taste. The taste of real tea was virtually lost and we are trying to bring it back again to consumers who are looking for some variety and quality again. This new type of tea (modern in concept), is CTC. It stands for Cut, Tear and supposedly Curl. Clearly CTC has a place and will be required. The problem is that commercial interests drive a new idea to the exclusion of other more traditional forms. There needs to be a balance and the consumer needs to demand that balance very clearly and not feel that it is hopeless to ask for it. Machinery is an expensive investment to estates and when they invest they have to invest into what they believe the market is demanding. Kenya has invested very heavily into CTC being virtually 100 % on that system. It seems to suit their teas. However should the market turn against CTC, they would have a huge re-investment problem, which is why balance and retention of all forms is vital in any field of endeavour.

Estate Housing and Worker Welfare:

Estate Worker Welfare:

In 1997 a 10 member team of senior executives and Superintendents (managers) of estates visited the Tata organisation for a nine day tour. The central theme of the tour was on social welfare activities. On their return the team compiled a report which was presented at a forum for Chief executive Officers (CEO’s) of the plantation companies and the subject was ‘Human Resource Development for the Plantation sector’, Both events were organised by the Planter’s Association of Sri Lanka. This confirms that the estates are mindful of their responsibilities to their valued workers.

Housing and Essential Services:

Prior to Nationalisation of the estates, private and company owners made provision for the total costs of providing, maintaining and up-grading worker and staff accommodation. To-day the estates provide land on the estates and various materials, including timber. However there are now certain trusts in operation, which were set up with help from Holland and the Scandainavian countries, providing schemes for self help housing grants and loans which are made to allow workers to achieve their own housing. The scheme also tests and provides sources of clean water on the estates.

Schools, Creches and Hospitals:

Again prior to nationalisation all these facilities were provided by the estates in full. To-day there is government and outside involvement in ensuring that these facilities are fully supplied. Estate managers are still responsible for the detailed work of supervising how these schemes are prepared and built as part of their other daily duties. The role of the manager has declined but is still vital to the daily running of every aspect of estate life. Previously managers were responsible for office days when workers could come make complaints, request transfers in housing away from problem families, report abuse by other workers, especially after pay day when drunken disputes often occurred upon return from the local village or town drinking tavern (caddy), workers would report their weddings, births and deaths, registration of new family members for work and so on. To-day in an increasingly complex society and Union representation, more and more of such work is based in police stations and government agency control. Some of the extremely strong bonds that existed between worker and management are weakening substantially. Whilst this is modernisation, it is also in my opinion regrettable that these bonds are weakening. Soon emotions that clearly existed will be history. Already consumers look upon the provision of their foodstuffs as objects provided by the good services of their giant store from some mega company making profits for which they have little sympathy. There is still a soul in the tea industry of to-day even though it is increasingly weakened by those commercial pressures.

The Sri Lankan Tea board:

www.lanka.net/teaboard

Ownership of the estates from the beginning of coffee was largely in the hands of private owners. These owners were either from the British army (when stood down), or civil servants, plus a few wealthy families like the de Soysas who already owned large areas of land or the Worms brothers who were related by marriage to the Rothschild family and a number of local small holder families with village lands. With the collapse of coffee many of the families became bankrupt or financially very weak and had to borrow from the relatively small number of agents in business. Thus the agency business grew and the formation of sterling and rupee companies mushroomed, taking advantage of many estates being available at give away prices. This set the pattern for the future with tea where private British owners were on the decline and companies increased their acreage holdings, appointing managers, some of whom had been owners previously. This was the state of affairs up to nationalization in the 1970’s. Nationalization lasted until 1992 and was an extremely unfortunate period for the industry. The viability of the industry was greatly affected by lack of incentives and the government then realized that private holdings in the low country which had planted up large areas of new tea were doing well and therefore private ownership for all estates would improve the situation. The first attempt at denationalization was not very successful as the leases were given for a very short period. Because there was no perceived security of tenure the system invited owners to take profits out and wait for the next run of leases. The second attempt has been far more successful and estates are now offered on long leases by the Government. Private ownership is now driving the industry to ever greater quality and export levels.

The tea Board operated throughout the Nationalization period and is a producer driven board. Thus it does not make decisions without the producer board approving of them. Unlike in India where the Board is independent of the producers and lays down the policy.

Since denationalization the Board has been active to encourage quality teas, to stamp out all malpractice’s and encourage locally driven business to provide facilities for designing and packing value added teas, rather than just exporting in bulk to foreign packers. The % of locally packed teas has increased enormously and now runs at something like 50 % of exports and seems to be growing each year.

Self help housing scheme on estate

The board is responsible for the Lion Logo applied to packed teas that have been submitted to the board for rigorous testing and sampling. If the tea reaches certain laid down criteria for quality control, which includes authenticity of type to the district declared and also includes testing for residues. All packers and exporters are licensed and monitored and only after rigorous appraisal of each tea is the exporter allowed to apply the lion logo to the pack. Thus it is a symbol of quality and authenticity. A cess on all production is levied and applied to improving marketing, quality control and promotional work worldwide. The industry is now operating with the I.S.O. (International Standards Organization) and increasing numbers of estates are operating to that standard with packing stations and all other facilities being encouraged to apply for certification by I.S.O. This is a further development to assure consumers of the standards that the industry operates by which include safe working conditions for workers in the industry.

The board is based in Colombo at: 
574, Galle Road, Colombo 3.

Tel No: 00-94-1-582121
Fax No:00-94-1-587341

Chairman: Mr. George Pelpola,
Director General: Mr. Abay Dias, 
Director of Tea Promotion:  Mr. A.H. de Alwis.
Tea Commissioner: Mr. H.D. Hemaratne