Our large leaf Ceylon O P is the original ‘micro-lot’ of the tea world. It always hails from the most wonderful evocatively-named gardens – Loolecondera, Pettigalla, Dimbullah, Thotulagalla, Idulgashinna… to list just a few. We have traded with our shippers for generations and they chop and change estates throughout the seasons, knowing that our high standards require scrupulous sourcing.
Sri Lanka, Ceylon & Cricket
In the tea world we still call this tea Ceylon, even though this beautiful island is now known as Sri Lanka. It’s like any good brand that has been built up over the generations, there is huge invisible value in the heritage and its associated brand recognition. That’s why you’ll see the Sri Lankan cricket team proudly sporting a logo of Ceylon Tea on their kit. No prizes for guessing what they serve up in the pavilion when they pull up stumps for the tea interval!
From Coffee to Tea
It might not have turned out quite this way were it not for a catastrophic blight that devastated the island’s coffee plantations in 1878 for the island was originally planted with coffee. Can you imagine stopping play for a coffee break? That just wouldn’t be cricket! The two great trading rivals, the coffee loving Dutch East India Company who arrived here first and the great tea drinking (British) East India Company both had a huge influence on the ultimate outcome. But it was the hard work and sheer determination of one man that carved out the island’s destiny on the world stage.
A Pioneering Scot
It was a Scotsman called James Taylor who first pioneered the planting of tea bushes on the island’s erstwhile coffee terraces. It was to be an uphill struggle both literally and metaphorically. He was following int the footsteps of earlier waves of Scotsmen who had cleared their way through the interior jungles to make way for coffee.
He must have had some patient backers for the tree takes five years to grow from seed to its first yield. His persistence and vision ultimately paid off and inspired others, who were looking at their ravaged coffee plantations. They had tried and failed with other crops, such as cinchona for the rather niche product of quinine. So his success gave them the green light to plant tea on a commercial scale and the island never looked back.
Looking forward we should be aware of the amber warning that has lit up on our ecosystem dashboard alerting us to the consequences of global warning. We are now seeing another rise in coffee rust and other diseases that thrive in hotter conditions.
