Taking coal to Newcastle and tea to China!
Reuters: “An estate owned by descendants of the 19th century British aristocrat for whom Earl Grey tea was named is turning history on its head by selling English tea to China.
The Tregothnan estate in the southwestern English county of Cornwall started selling tea from its tiny plantation in 2005 and last year produced about 10 metric tons (11.023 tons) of tea and infusions.
Although a drop in the ocean of global tea production, which the UK Tea Council estimated to be about 4.3 million metric tons, Tregothnan has found a niche for its products by trading on England’s historical reputation as a nation of tea-lovers.
“It’s unique. There’s no one else who’s growing tea in England and putting English tea on the market,” owner Evelyn Boscawen told Reuters.
The long history of immersing tea leaves in hot water for a refreshing drink is not lost on the son of the current Viscount Falmouth and a descendant of British Prime Minister Charles Grey, for whom the bergamot-flavored Earl Grey tea is named and whose Reform Act of 1832 sowed the seeds of modern parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage in Britain.
Chinese tea has been coming to Britain since the East India Company first imported it in the 17th century for consumption by wealthy aristocrats.
By the Victorian era, taking tea had become a regular ritual at almost every level of society from elaborate afternoon tea for the rich in country houses to tea and gruel for the working poor as depicted by author Charles Dickens.
But the Boscawens at Tregothnan are bucking the historic trend of tea flowing from East to West by beginning to export some of their wares to China and elsewhere.
“We do see China as an opportunity at the moment,” Boscawen said. “The Chinese are great lovers of buying exotic things from all over the world. Even if it might have come from China (originally).”
Tea, native to Asia, is not traditionally grown in Britain but can be cultivated outdoors at Tregothnan, which is situated in England’s southwest and benefits from an unusual microclimate similar to that of Darjeeling in India.
Less similar to India is the tiny scale of production at Tregothnan, which might be large enough to be considered a small Darjeeling tea garden, the English estate’s commercial and garden director Jonathan Jones said.
“We went into this right from the outset as being able to put the English into English tea,” Jones said. “We weren’t ever looking at being the new India or China, that’s ridiculous.””
via Earl Grey descendants sell English tea to China | Reuters.
See also: For all the Tea in China by Sarah Rose: the smuggling of and transplanting tea from China into India took several years to effect though eventually, British tastes turned to Indian tea in preference to Chinese tea.
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