TEA, GLORIOUS TEA

Home of the Cuppa

The Hantana Tea Estate is home to the island's only Tea Museum. The old factory, set amid acres of tea bushes, lets you get up close and personal with the drink that made the island famous. Even closer to hand, though with fewer tea acres around it is the Giragama Tea Plantation.

Famous though the island is for its remarkable teas, it was first renowned for its coffee. In 1845, there were just 37,000 acres of the crop, but by 1878, coffee estates covered 275,000 acres.

Tamil labourers arrived (70,000 per year at one point) to help the industry grow, and in 1867, a railway was built from Kandy to Colombo to carry coffee. It was, said the papers, a “coffee rush,” but one that benefited many, for a third of the estates were owned by native Sri Lankans. Investors flooded in, and by 1860, Sri Lanka was one of the three largest coffee-producing countries in the world.

But in 1869, just as it seemed as if the coffee boom would go on and on, the crop was hit by a killer disease - Hemileia vastatrix, "coffee rust” or “Devastating Emily” as the planters knew it. It took time to spread – but within thirty years, there were barely eleven thousand acres of the plant left on the island. The industry was wiped out.

That the country did not follow suit is probably thanks not to the British government, but to a Scot named James Taylor and his experiments with tea. 

Tea first arrived in Sri Lanka in 1824, when a few plants from China were introduced into the Royal Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya. In 1839, more plants arrived from Assam and Calcutta. Between those two dates, Taylor was born in 1835 in Scotland.

He emigrated to the island in 1852 to plant coffee and spotted early the effects of coffee rust. On his Loolecondera Estate in Kandy - near Hantana - he immediately started experimenting with tea until, from plant to tea cup, he had mastered all the techniques and processes needed to succeed with this new crop.

In 1875, Taylor sent the first shipment of Ceylon tea to the London Tea Auction. Despairing coffee planters sat at Taylor’s feet to learn tea production.

Within about 20 years, tea exports increased from around 80 tons to almost 23,000 tons in 1890. Tea had caught on. The few estates that made up the eleven hundred acres of planted tea back in 1875 had, by 1890, grown to two hundred and twenty thousand acres.

Today, the country makes, quite rightly in most eyes, the claim to be the home of the cuppa worldwide, despite being only its fourth-largest black tea producer. Sri Lanka’s climate is perfect for the plant, and its modern history is moulded by it.

Tea accounts for almost 2% of total GDP and employs directly or indirectly over one million people. Its bushes cover over seven hundred square miles, and its sales, to places like Russia, the Middle East, Turkey, Iran, the UK, Egypt, and Japan, amount to almost three hundred million kilos. 

Tea Regions
Not for nothing is seven the number of completeness and perfection, for the island has seven distinct tea regions.

1
Subtle
At 6000 ft +, the highest teas are those from Nuwara Eliya - rugged, bracing, cold enough for frost, and home to the country’s finest tea: subtle, golden-hued with a delicate, fragrant bouquet.

2
Balanced
At 4-6,000 ft, Uva is caressed by both the NE & SW monsoons and a drying Cachan ocean wind that closes the leaves, forcing a high level of flavour balance. It is aromatic, mellow, and smooth.

3
Tangy
Overlapping is Uda Pussellawa, at 5-6,000 ft, a thinly populated region famed for rare plants & leopards, and bombed by the NE Monsoon to give a strong, dark, tangy tea with a hint of rose.

4
Clean
Dimbulla, at 3,500-5000 ft, is a region drenched by the SW monsoon. Crisp days, wet nights, and a complex terrain create a clean, coppery red tea, most famous as English Breakfast Tea.

5
Classic
Kandy, where the tea industry began on plantations at 2-4,000 ft, in 1867, produces bright, light, and coppery teas with good strength, flavour, and body.

6
Caramel
One of two low-lying regions at 0-2,500 ft, Sabaragamuwa, home to sapphires and humid rainforest, is hit by the SW monsoon, giving a robustly flavoured dark yellow-brown tea with caramel hints.

7
Strong
Low-lying Ruhuna, which runs from the coast to the Sinharaja Rain Forest, is shielded from monsoons and has soil that promotes rapid, long, beautiful leaves that turn intensely black, making strong, full-flavoured dark teas.