Meet the Producers
From its inception the European Speciality tea Association (then European Tea Society) recognised the importance of engaging with tea producers, both in Europe and around the world. For speciality this is where it all begins, marrying passion with best practices in both cultivation and then processing to ensure a fantastic sensory tea experience in the cup.
It may well surprise some that Europe is even mentioned in a piece about tea production, but there are between 70 and 80 tea gardens in Europe from at least 16 difference countries, from Denmark in the north to Spain in the south. All of them relatively small, many of them concentrating on speciality and a good number of them using organic techniques.
The European Speciality Tea Association has taken that recognition of the importance of tea growers by launching a new category of membership specifically for producers. Each producer member will be able to have access to a document written by the President, Nigel Melican, called Guidelines for small-scale tea production. These words are taken from the introduction to the guide: “There are very few Golden Rules to tea production; we can rarely say that under all conditions this or that is the Right Way or Wrong Way – but for every individual set of conditions, there is always the Best Way. These Tea Guidelines, based on 40 years of work in the industry spent seeking out the best ways, are written as an aide-memoire to the key tasks and actions, and some tips to help you choose the best way to avoid the many potential mistakes commonly made when starting the journey.”
As an association we really hope that we will be able to play our part in promoting speciality tea and improving quality right at the beginning of the tea journey.
Monastery of Tea
We are happy and excited to be a part of ESTA as a producer member. We believe it will give us an opportunity to connect with all the members to exchange knowledge and explore new markets by sharing our love for Tea.
Our brand, 'Monastery of Tea' was initiated with a broader vision of inspiring people to adopt a holistic sustainable lifestyle. We are committed to producing organic food and beverage products that are grown using traditional agricultural practices, and which are harvested and processed at the Dunumadalawa Estate; our plantation which is situated about 15km away from Kandy, the Hill Capital of Sri Lanka.
We are a producer of organic speciality Tea, processed using the premium two leaves and bud from our Tea garden. Our Teas are produced in small batches and due to the unique and precise process we follow, all our Teas carry a distinct and subtle aroma and flavour.
Apart from Tea, we grow pepper, coffee, coconut and recently we have introduced various vegetable crops and fruit plants along with spices such as cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. We have also moved towards dairy and poultry and are raising milk cows, goats and free-range chicken as well. We produce our own organic liquid fertilisers and compost for soil enrichment in-house using animal and green manure.
With the idea of eliminating our carbon footprint further, we decided to do our packaging from our own handmade paper produced using natural plant material collected from our plantation.
We are providing employment to multiple individuals coming from low income families and we hope our initiative will help them to improve their livelihoods in the future.
You can visit our website on www.monasteryoftea.com for more details about our sustainability initiative and email us on sankha@monasteryoftea.com
Click on the images to meet the producers
