A REPORT FROM A POTENTIAL CLIENT AFTER RECIVING SAMPLES OF MY TEAS RECENTLY:
“We’ve had enormous fun with all your different teas. After much discussion, we have finally settled on the New Vithanakande as being our favourite, with Dimbula teabags running it a close second for flavour. It is so lovely not to have to add milk, as one does with most of the popular brands to counter the bitterness.
We were fascinated to read about the culture and manufacture; like I imagine most people, we had no idea how much climate, soil type and altitude played a part. Altogether a lovely introduction to the world of proper tea; we were most appreciative.
Many thanks and good wishes.” PS
ASDA BEATS BIGGEST TEA BRANDS WITH BEST BREW – Daily Telegraph page 7- 06th.September 2024:
This report was entered into the Daily Telegraph as the latest Commercial achievement in provinding consumers with the lowest cost tea bags on the market at £1.20 for 800 bags. In my opinion on the face of it extremely effective in persuading the average U.K. tea drinker to rush to buy. The sort of message that U.K. consumers love to hear. The question however is, how does that return anything significant to the estates to continue to uplift the welfare conditions of their resident workers, increase their earning power to allow them to remain on the estate instead of leaving to find better employment with greater prospects elsewhere?
However to an ex tea planter, whose family were involved in the island of Ceylon in the 1850’s following the wiping out of coffee by disease and its replacement by tea in the 1860’s. An episode that ruined many families who had started with coffee to help provide the British Governor with the much needed funds to build the infrastructure of roads, bridges, railways and buildings needed to govern the island. Out of that terrible chaos and pain rose an industry that moved Conan D’Oyle to write in De Profundis:
“Those were the royal days of coffee planting in Ceylon, before a single season and a rotten 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 the heart when their one great industry is withered to rear up ina few years another as rich to take its place, and the tea-fields of Ceylon are a true monument to courage as is the lion at Waterloo. But in ’72 there was no cloud yet above the skyline, and the hopes of the planters were as high and as bright as the hillsides on which they reared their crops.”
That experience of total helplessness without any reaearch body that could advise on a remedy ensured the creation by the planters of one of the greatest research bodies for tea in the world. “The Talawakele Tea Research Institute”. The Ceylon tea industry flourished and some families that had survived and struggled through the terrible heartbreak and even suicides to grow some of the best teas in the world with such variety of natural colours and characters developed in a fascinating central hilly region with deep sided valleys rising in some 6 and I would claim 7 definitive districts from 300 feet (91.4) Metres elevation to 7,000 feet (2,133.6) metres elevation.
With Nationalisation in 1971 the comercial interests abandoned Ceylon, moving to East Africa and developing the “the tea bag” and commercial companies found with that process that they could develop strong blended teas without in my opinion any real characters but giving the consumer convenience with strength, sufficient to bypass the normal brewing temperature fired into the manufactured leaf, losing any reference to provenance or the famous characters that were so beloved by the British as the connoisseurs of the tea world and that we strive to still to develop when the two quality seasons that the island experiences, arrive in some form of intensity. Like quality wine production, the cool winds originating in the India Ocean far below South Africa, sweep in and up the steep valleys from the the West early in the year and from the East towards the year end, over bushes that have hopefully received a good period of dry weather to wilt the leaves on the bushes and concentrate their leaf chemicals. Then nighttime manufacture is demanded to try and preserve as much of the highly natural volatile character producing oils that are released in the rolling process, possible in a cooler factory away from the heat of the day.
The aim of commercialisation of tea is the withdrawal of any information as to the origin of the teas used and blending which allows total control on the price of the product with careful blending in of cheaper sources of teas or grades undetected by the untrained palate of the consumer. Gifting mesmerising convenience and the strength of blend allowing consumers to ignore rules on the correct brewing temperature guidelines to bring out the character oils preserved in teas of high quality, fired at the factory onto the leaf surface that are not there anymore in commercial teas and even to combat in my opinion the dire quality of much of our water here in the U.K. with many areas having very hard water that is diastrous for tea or coffee brewing, causing scumming as it is sometimes called. Drinking a quality Ceylon tea on an estate brewed with spring water from the mountain is a total heavenly experience.
So these days since 1971 we have two types of Ceylon tea industry. The one that strives to give the consumer some of the very best teas in the world with less strength and bitterness but some that will balance milk for those that need to adulterate it. I personally wish that the CTC and Rotorvane modern systems of what I call cut and tear had never been invented. The classic Traditional (Orthodox) eliptical rollers that twist and gently express the leaf cells against the wooden curved battens on the roling table produce the finest teas in my opinion and were invented in the early 1800’s. Tea mking should never increase the temperature of the process above 90 degrees F. I have tested manufactures being made to order with 5 runs through the meat mincer chambers of a Rotorvanes system in order to tear the leaf small enough exiting at 98 – 99 degrees F as a wet mass. Even worse is when using the reverse mince action is demanded.
In recent years with the changing climate all over the world attaining a really top quality season in a district like Uva is becoming almost impossible and again the commercial interest prevails in adding an additive to Uva teas to develop that character so sought after around the world not only in the short season but to make it available all the year around to enhance marketing inerests. The additive it has to be said has been declared safe to use but is just another dumming down in the interests of the commercial world in my opinion and that sort of development is never broadcast to those outside the industry.
When I think of the modern trend to blended strong teas, I know that raising the profile of the teas rather than chepening them will offar greater value to the estates in their constant aim to imrove the working conditions of their highly skilled workers. Tea making demands that the rolling tea fields, kept following strictly to follow the shape of the terrain on a 6 day plucking cycle, in all weathers to bring in the leaf by the main system that is still practiced by the estates which is highly skilled hand plucking for the best quality teas. Estate workers having been given a bungalow on an estate have that for life and to the detrement of the estate they may continue to live in it whilst seeking work elsewhere, a burden imposed on the estates by the ruling authorities with in my opinion little sense. Yet with the professed consumer aim to get the estates to increase wages and to imrove living conditions, the consumer then demands ever cheaper foods. The two aims can in my opinion can never be reconciled.
Over the years we have accumulated some 70 awards for my teas but awards have little impact unless they increase sales. If the cost of producing the quality for an award is high, there seems little sense in accumulating awards that anyway are usually only the personal opinion of the taster, who may be a very experienced taster with great experience of the industry or just looking for a particular asset to meet what he or she believes is the market.
I will pass on and I know what will now be the end of 5 generations of my families efforts to strive for and present the best Ceylon teas to the consumer. The sight of those wonderful experienced Tea-makers faces that light up when one discusses the possibility of moving to a really top quality manufacture for a change, bringing all their years of training into a challenge is wonderful to perceive. Ultimately the commercial idea will win, whether the industry survives may be another matter.