Tea Emperor

OUT WITH THE BULK

Tea Board of India has asked north-eastern states to focus more on orthodox specialty tea aimed solely at the international markets instead of the bulk “crush, tear and curl” tea, which they are mostly producing at present.

A well-managed tea plantation in India on a scenic area by the railway with steam locomotives.

BETTER TEA QUALITY MEANS MORE MONEY

Tea Board has the idea that the states should follow the Sikkim model while maintaining quality close to that of the Darjeeling crop. In essence it would mean that India would be able to produce larger quantity of high quality teas, which in turn would fetch higher price on international tea markets. This is important, because of the strengthening international trend of tea consumption bodes lucrative markets for high-end teas.

WHY CEYLON TEA IS SO FAMOUS?

Sir Thomas Lipton is behind all that fuzz, which today surrounds tea that comes from Sri Lanka, and there’s an interesting story behind it.

A photo of Sir Thomas Lipton. It is difficult to see the man from behind that bush of a mustache, but unfortunately it is part of the style of Mr. Lipton. Must have been a fashionable style back then.

SIR THOMAS LIPTON

Mr. Lipton was a successful retailer and you can read more about the person at Wikipedia. He started with one grocery shop in 1871 and – eventually – was able to expand into a chain of about 400 shops with the help of aggressive advertising and low pricing. Year 1888 he decided to expand into tea and already the following year his organisation sold 4 million lbs of tea. A year later the amount had grown to 6 million lbs. Tea quickly became the most important sales article in his chain of grocery stores and transformed his business.

LIPTON SAILS TO THE CEYLON

In 1890 he traveled to Australia and on that trip he made a short stop at the island of Ceylon. One thing you need to know about Mr. Lipton is that he was all for cutting the middleman and selling directly to the consumers. This is the reason why he wasn’t entirely happy to buy tea only at London’s tea auctions. Anyway, let’s get back to the Ceylon.

Those days there had been similar financial crisis as we have now, so the asking price for tea plantations was right, and he ended up buying several tea plantations. His acquisitions tallied only up to 15% of total tea production on Ceylon, but his marketing engine took care of the image and everybody from Britain to the States thought that Mr. Lipton owns the whole island. Even today we think tea when we see the word Lipton.

I wrote about how Sri Lanka wants to benefit from their internationally recognized brand of Ceylon tea. Like most things in life this is not without contradiction. You see, Sri Lanka Tea Exporters Association would like to have the right to import more tea to the island for blending and other processes that add value. Obviously

THE OTHER POINT OF VIEW – TEA PLANTERS

The other party would like to create a strong brand for Ceylon tea so that local tea plantations would have plenty of demand for their products. A big part of this brand is that the Ceylon tea is cultivated locally on the island and is not diluted with imported tea.

They already made it with used coffee grounds – bio-fuel on the cheap. Starbucks is hoping to turn a hefty profit from something that they used to treat as waste and cost. That would mean more money to company coffers and therefore less upward price pressure for the sold coffee.

Now we have a Pakistani scientist that invented some sort of nano catalysts, which do their magic and turn used tea into bio-diesel. That is seriously good news for big tea users, unfortunately big tea house chains are not as common as coffee chains therefore it will be more difficult to put this invention into real use, because I’m not going to start producing home-made bio-diesel. Anyway, calculating in all the prior accomplishments of green tea we can now safely say that tea is going to solve all the problems in the world.

Now there’s a challenge for cold Finnish winter conditions. However I am completely fascinated by the tea tree and that simply means one has to have a very own tea tree.

STARTING WITH SEEDS

Looks like starting from seeds seems to be the only choice for me as tea trees can’t be found from local shops not to mention tea tree seeds. I have to get the seeds from some online shop.

ONLINE SEEDS ARE HARD TO FIND

I found quite a few places that claim to sell tea tree seeds, but from a list of nine online shops only three actually had them in stock. None of those three places deliver to Europe, so I inquired this and now I’m waiting for the results. Hopefully I’ll get positive answers, but if not then I just have to spend more time looking for suppliers.