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Sri Lanka and the tea

The history of tea in Sri Lanka

When driving through the highlands of Sri Lanka, it cannot be overlooked that tea plays a very important role in this country. The stable temperatures throughout the year as well as recurring rainfall make tea cultivation and tea harvesting possible all year round. Currently, Sri Lanka is the fourth largest tea producer in the world, after China, India and Kenya.


Who brought tea to Sri Lanka? It was the British. Why this happened is a very exciting story in my opinion, which I would like to briefly summarize for you.


In the past, the number one tea country was China. China had a lot of success and gradually increased its production quantities. In order to be able to sell the quantities, they had to look for more and more customers - among others in Europe. For a very long time, China sold tea to the British, among others. In return, the British sold opium to China. In this trade relationship there were a lot of conflicts, for example, from the increasingly strict regulations concerning the consumption of opium in China or general price increases due to the monopoly position in tea export. The British did not want to be dependent on China anymore and needed a solution how to get tea themselves.


In the 19th century, the British secured an economically and politically strong position, partly due to their colonies in India. The British East India Company, a powerful trade alliance, set out to end this monopoly position of China with regard to tea. Robert Fortune, a Scottish botanist and explorer, was sent to China to conduct espionage. He secretly acquired the knowledge of tea plants, tea cultivation and tea processing and brought this knowledge to India. There, thanks to him, tea cultivation was started and thus China's monopoly position was brought down.


On Sri Lanka there was originally no tea cultivation. When the British came to Sri Lanka in 1815 by conquering Kandy, they cultivated coffee. Unfortunately, a rust fungus was then introduced to the island, which gradually destroyed all coffee plants. The locals lacked both knowledge and financial resources to grow a substitute product to coffee.


The Scotsman James Taylor had set himself the goal of growing tea on Sri Lanka due to the optimal climatic conditions. To generate knowledge about it, he traveled to India in 1866 to learn everything about tea cultivation. In 1867, he started cultivating tea plants on the island, thus laying the foundation for the tea industry in Sri Lanka. In 1872, he started the first fully equipped tea factory on the island. The tea was processed directly and then exported to Europe.


An additional important role for tea cultivation in Sri Lanka was played by a man whose last name is still very familiar to us today, Mr. Thomas Lipton. He came to Sri Lanka in 1890, a time when tea cultivation on the island was still in its infancy. He bought some tea fields and founded his own tea factory. His main goal was to cut out the middlemen of tea and sell it directly to make tea affordable for everyone. He has had a significant contribution to the rapid development of the tea industry on the island.


The types as well as the production of tea

Strictly speaking, there are classically only 3 types of tea - green tea, black tea and white tea (and also still mixed varieties between these types). All other teas, which we know from the supermarket like fruit tea or camomile tea have nothing to do with the original tea plant as the main ingredient.


The production of different kinds of tea is done with the same tea plant - the difference lies in the choice of leaves and also in the processing procedure. Also, one more sentence about the tea plant - when you see pictures of tea plants, they always look like bushes. If the tea plant were allowed to grow freely, it would be a tree, which can grow up to 10 meters high. Only to be able to harvest the tea regularly and easily the plants are cut together to this bush form.


The younger the leaves of the tea plant are, the more aroma they contain. For high-quality teas, therefore, only the very youngest light green leaves are harvested, and for white tea even only the tips (i.e. the freshest leaf still rolled up at the end of the branch).


Depending on the type of tea, the production process differs:


For green tea, as the name suggests, the leaves must remain green so that it can retain its typical color. For this reason, the leaves are heated immediately after picking to stop the fermentation process. Then the leaves are rolled and dried.


In the case of black tea, the leaves are rolled directly and then dried. By breaking the cell walls, a natural fermentation process takes place and the tea leaves get their black color.


In the case of white tea, the rolling of the leaves is omitted, as only the very youngest, still rolled tea leaves are used for the production of this tea. These are gently dried. Due to the minimal intervention in the processing, the white tea is one of the most delicate and flavorful teas ever.


Amba Tea Factory is a very small, organic tea producer with 100kg of production per month. This company has consciously chosen quality over quantity and now distributes its high quality tea in over 30 different countries.


To learn more about tea, a visit to this tea factory was ideal. Since it is somewhat hidden, only a few tourists come by and you get in very small groups all the information about the history of tea, a tour of the tea plantation including the production rooms and a tea tasting. It was super relaxed there and our guide answered all our questions in peace.

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