Tea Trek
Ceylon tradition enters a modern market
by Cindy Lou Dale
THOTULAGALLA ESTATE: An organic tea farm in the Haputale district at 5,049 feet. Standing at the precipice, the author “half expected a dragon to fly out from a hidden cave and snatch me up and use me as nourishment for its young-—that’s just how mystic it was.”
A cockerel announced the break of a new day bathed in a pre-dawn light that seemed to come from out of nowhere. A bouquet wafted across the room, rousing me to a freshly brewed cup of Ceylon tea. Wrapped in a duvet, cup in hand, I shuffled over to my window seat.
Set in a deep bowl of emerald velvet was a small, mist-shrouded village stirring to wakefulness. The first golden rays of dawn unfolded across a dewy plantation of shimmering mint-colored tea bushes as trim as urban hedgerows, punctuated by scarlet-and-turquoise saris of the early-shift tea pickers. Their poised silhouettes, slightly stooped, merged with the tea bushes. This was a landscape timeless and fetching, companionably rooted to an ancient past.
Some 4,000 feet above the Indian Ocean, in the central highlands of Sri Lanka, lies Bogawantalawa Valley, known as the golden valley of tea and home to old Ceylon, the country’s former name, synonymous with the world’s finest tea.
CEYLON TREASURE: A plantation worker’s child hides in a doorway.
Numerous legends surround the arrival of tea plantations in Ceylon, but in reality the credit should go to the skill and foresight of Sir James Taylor, a Scottish coffee plantation manger who initially experimented with just 19 acres (eight hectares) of tea in 1867. Three years later, the colonial coffee plantations were struck by a rotting fungus. Within a few short years of the coffee crop failure, the island’s plantations changed to tea, and today, Ceylon is the world’s largest tea exporter. The tea sector in Ceylon is a vital component of the economy—the country’s largest employer, both directly and indirectly, to more than one million people. Ceylon’s best teas draw their distinctive essence and flavor from the environmental stimulus of the region’s mountainous hill country.
I stood beside Andrew Taylor, a kindly and deferential man whose lineage dates back to Sir James, the founding father of Ceylon tea. We surveyed the swaths of intensely green tea acreage containing some of the original tea bushes planted by his ancestor. The hands of the tea pickers resembled butterflies flitting over shrubs, moving independently of one another, nipping off the youngest and topmost leaves by snapping the stem with a sharp movement of the index and middle fingers, then tossing their pickings into large baskets on their backs. “It is said that only small and agile feminine hands, and the patience of the female temperament, can achieve high-yield plucking,” said Taylor. This interpretation aside, plucking tea leaves clearly requires exacting skill, more specifically nimble fingers.
ANDREW TAYLOR: Tea aficionado and descendent of Sir James Taylor, the founder of Ceylon tea
IT'S ALL IN THE WRIST
“That,” Taylor pointed out, “is what we refer to as a fine plucking. Those ladies are removing only the bud on the stem, together with the first two leaves directly below it.” We watched them in silence, listening to their whispered voices and soft humming.
Here and there, turbaned men, clothed in crisp white linen jackets and sarongs, pruned and supervised the plucking process. Once the pluckers had filled their baskets, they would meet at an assembly point where the leaves were inspected and weighed before being transported to the tea estate factory, a rectangular white building at the end of the valley.
“Ceylon’s tea bushes, if left untended, shoot up to become immensely tall trees,” Taylor explained. “They are pruned regularly for tea-growing purposes and are never taller than a squat bush—thus making the plucking process of the tender young top leaves easier.
“Teas are graded according to the geographic heights at which they are grown,” he continued. “The low-grown tea, which accounts for about half of Ceylon’s total production, is found from sea level up to 600 meters (about 1,970 feet). The principal Ceylon crops come from these lowlands and are popular in Western Asia, the Middle East and Russia, as the tea leaves are twisted and retain much of their original length. Medium-grown teas are found from around 600 to 1,200 meters (about 1,970 to 3,940 feet) and produce a thicker tea popular in Australia, Europe, Japan and North America. But it’s at the slow-growing higher altitudes of 1,200 meters and above where the optimum grades are nurtured and where Ceylon’s reputation for taste and aroma is found.”
Taylor continued with details about medium-grown and high-grown territories that are further subdivided into western (Dimbula) and eastern (Uva) regions. “Teas from these regions have their own characteristics, depending on factors like the direction of the slope and weather conditions at plucking time,” he said. “Also, basic climatic conditions like temperature—cool nights, for example, produce a better tea.”
We took a torturously slow drive along a steep mountain path to the Norwood factory. En route, Taylor explained the production process, which starts with the withering of semi-dry green leaves that are then transferred to a machine to be rolled, causing them to rupture and twist. These crushed leaves are left to oxidize for a while and then fired, producing black tea. “The secret of producing a good-quality tea is in the precise timing of each process along the way.”
CEYLON TEA TRAILS: Agile hands are necessary of the tea pickers.
Whatever feelings of unhurried tranquility the plantations may have evoked, the opposite was true of the stiflingly hot and dimly lit tea factory where barefoot laborers toiled amid a jumble of roaring mechanical contraptions. Taylor broke off to speak with a supervisor, slipping into Sinhala, one of Ceylon’s languages (the others being English and Tamil, spoken mostly in the north), his voice all but lost among the deafening factory noises. He then pointed out a machine and detailed the happenings of the mechanical rolling process. “The withered leaves are rolled—actually, it’s more of a twisting and crushing action—which causes the cell walls to break down, releasing the leaves’ green tannin, which gives tea its distinctive flavor. The more the leaf is twisted and broken, the more superior its strength and flavor.” He considered his statement for a moment, then added, “Historically, this was done in the palm of the hand, but was considered unsanitary, and now the rolling machines’ rotating metal disks perform this task.”
The process continued onto roll breaking, a procedure that separates the twisted balls of leaves and allows them to cool. The roll breaker is a long, mechanized sieve that vibrates while pushing the leaves over the mesh from one end to the other. The leaves are then fired and dried for 21 minutes in an enormous dryer on a series of trays, exposing them to temperatures as high as 260 degrees Fahrenheit. If the drying period is too short, the leaves may become moldy in time. If it’s too long, the flavor becomes bitter and caramelized.
Before packing, the dry leaves are graded and sorted by vibrating sieves into the two main categories of whole leaf and broken leaf, and then still further subdivided. Grading machines are fitted with meshed screens of different sizes—uniform to those used in tea plantations around the world.
NORWOOD FACTORY: Along a steep mountain path in Sri Lanka rests this factory where Ceylon tea is processed.
“The flavor is extraordinarily bright and invigorating,” he said, pursing his lips. This particular tea evidently soothed his soul. “This is a creation of the slow growing altitude,” Taylor said, closing his eyes to savor the aftertaste.
IN THE CUP
“Ceylon’s fragrant teas are famed the world over for the luxuriously full-bodied, sharp black leaves that come from these hills,” Taylor said. To experience life on a working tea estate, I had reserved a suite at one of the Ceylon Tea Trails’ four converted colonial bungalows that were originally built for the British tea estate managers in the days of the Raj. Sitting on the shaded veranda overlooking Norwood Estate, Taylor critically inspected the contents of a teapot placed before him, then dutifully poured me a brew. “This tea was given almost no oxidation time,” he said, pointing an accusing finger at the cup. “I’d say it has given the final product a characteristic rawness.” I nodded, agreeing with what tasted like a mouthful of amber liquid infused with something remarkably silken.
IT'S ALL IN THE TASTING
“The final and equally important part of the whole process is evaluating the taste,” Taylor said, explaining that producers taste tea merely for quality control purposes, then a broker does a tasting to inform buyers as to what qualities are available. In turn, the broker advises what qualities and requirements the buyers are seeking from producers. The buyers also do tastings either to assess the broker’s appraisal prior to purchase or for blending purposes. “However, we deal directly with the buyers who all have expert palates and can instantly establish any miscalculations in the production process,” Taylor says.
GOING NATIVE
Heading back to Castlereagh Lake, where my airtaxi waited to take me back to Colombo, we followed a windy road through a montage of deep valleys and high mountains draped in hues of moss and jade. I asked my driver, Gunapala, if we could stop off at a tearoom at the nearby village. He smiled broadly, nodding enthusiastically.
At our destination, we were each handed a cup of treacle-like black tea and what appeared to be a cube of sugar. “This is the way locals drink Ceylon tea,” Gunapala informed me, picking up the sugar cube. “To drink tea with us, you need to take this jaggery and place it here, in front of your teeth. Then you carefully sip the tea through the cube.” We exchanged smiles, and I followed his direction.
Jaggery is an intensely sweet, solid block of sugar derived from the reduction of the sap from the coconut flower, which, when evaporated and caramelized, has a sugary-fudgy character, making it an ideal accompaniment to the intensely thick, strong, smaller-leafed teas favored by the local market. Without jaggery, these teas would be a real trial to drink. The sugar counteracts the strength and bitterness of the tea and ensures an energy boost that will keep the recipient purring on productively for several hours.
MILE HIGH CLUB
“Tea? Coffee?” the flight attendant enquired.
“Depends,” I said. “Got any jaggery?” She looked at me with a touch of wonder.
“No jaggery here, I’m afraid, but as we’re the country’s official airline, we consider ourselves ambassadors to Ceylon’s best.”
She produced a distinctively marked “T” tin of Dilmah. We swapped smiles.
“Go on, then,” I said, inclining my head at my cup. I considered the destiny of the sweet-scented leaves as they travelled to their final destinations and envisioned well-dressed tea trays in homes around the world, bearing scones and china teapots, warm milk and sugar lumps. Andrew Taylor’s easy smile came to mind. “Splendid stuff, wouldn’t you say?” I could hear him ask.
TEA TIME: A tea tasting is set up at the Norwood factory.
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