The leaves that go into a cup of Ceylon tea play a surprisingly complex role in the history of Sri Lanka.
It started with a single camellia sinesis plant brought from China in 1824 by the British, who had colonized the island then known as Ceylon in 1801.
The plant was to be
displayed in the Royal Botanical Gardens outside Kandy in the country's
lush interior -- but it has since grown into a $1.5 billion export
business for the teardrop shaped island nation off India's southern tip.
Alongside the
agricultural production of tea, which accounts for 2.5% of the country's
$60 billion GDP, tea tourism is also emerging as a popular experience
for travelers.
In 1867 Scottish coffee
planter James Taylor, the man who would be recognized as the pioneer of
Sri Lanka's tea industry, planted 19 acres of tea near Kandy at an
altitude of around 500 meters.
In the 1860s, however, Sri Lanka was the world's largest coffee producer and few paid attention to Taylor.
Two years later came the first seeds of change when Hemileia vastatrix, or coffee rust, was detected on the island.
Within 10 years, this
lethal fungus led to financial ruin for the island's British coffee
planters. Roughly 1,700 left for England while the remaining 400 or so
switched to growing tea.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
famously commented that "the tea fields of Ceylon are as true a monument
to courage as is the lion at Waterloo."
Tea industry starts
The East India Company
brought Tamil women from Southern India to work as tea pluckers,
ushering in the next chapter of human suffering on these lush green
acres.
By 1890, the year Thomas
Lipton arrived to purchase tea estates, 23,000 tons of tea were
exported to London's tea auctions. Ceylon had become an island
synonymous with tea.
Ceylon won independence from British rule in 1948 but the tea industry remained a colonial domain.
When government pressure
led to the selection of six Ceylonese men as the first indigenous tea
tasters in 1950, one of them, Merrill J. Fernando, remembers being told
by British colleagues, "You all eat too much curry, it ruins the taste
buds!"
From a single plant, to this.
Even as the island
nation became the world's largest tea exporter in 1965, the industry
itself was still dominated by the British, who exported the tea as raw
material and branded it overseas.
Fernando began dreaming
of packaging and marketing 100% pure Ceylon tea, dispensing with
middlemen and keeping more profits for his country, which officially
became known as Sri Lanka in 1972.
Two destructive rounds
of land reform in the 1970s delayed those dreams and nearly wiped out
Sri Lanka's tea industry, but in 1988 Fernando founded Dilmah Tea.
Today, Dilmah is Sri Lanka's most recognized international brand.
World famous
According to the World
Tea Council, in 2012 Sri Lanka exported 340 million kilograms of tea,
the third highest by volume behind Kenya and China, though number two
when measured in value terms, thanks to the premium revolution begun by
Dilmah's founder.
When asked about the
future of Sri Lankan tea given increased competition from younger, more
productive fields in Kenya and the global coffee craze, Fernando's son,
Dilmah executive Malik Fernando, points to his competition.
"We need Teaeli and
others to continue introducing sophisticated products that identify
Ceylon tea as the finest grown to the next generations," he says.
For his part, Teaeli
founder Dushyantha De Silva saw a market niche five years ago. "Ceylon
tea had not changed much since my grandparent's time," explains the 22
year-old Colombo native.
"When our 26-year civil
war ended in 2009, we all knew a tourist boom would come. I felt the
market had room to welcome creative new tastes, especially for overseas
visitors who want to leave with a souvenir of Sri Lanka's tea culture."
Link to source: http://edition.cnn.com
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