Wes + Marlow Travel Blog: Ceylon Tea: November 4-6

Sri Lanka is where the British established the tea trade in the early 1800's. The tea grown in central Sri Lanka is said to be the highest quality and commands the highest price from retail tea manufacturers. We traveled through the center of tea country - from Kandy and Nuwara Eliya to Ella - in order to see the green hills and to see the tea production process.

The tea hills are divided among many "tea plantations" which are individually owned tea processing facilities ("tea factories"). The tea factories employ hundreds of "tea pickers" who work in the tea hills and pluck the leaves. The tea pickers are primarily hindu women from india because the wages are too low to attract Sri Lankans. One of the inspirations for our trip to Sri Lanka was a photo Bernard Millant showed me of tea pickers working in the hills. I was captivated by their colorful saris and large baskets worn on their backs contrasted against the spectacularly steep and verdant hills and wanted to experience this on our trip.

The tea produced here is fresh! Tea pickers deliver the picked leaves to the production site twice a day at the end of their morning and afternoon shifts. The process begins by weighing each bag of tea leaves and crediting the woman who delivered the bag. Next the tea leaves are spread in large beds over grates where fans distribute warm air under the leaves - a process referred to as "withering" where the moisture is reduced by about half. After four hours the leaves are dry enough to break into smaller bits. More heat is applied and then the leaves are sorted by size and quality and then bagged in 100 kilo bags. The entire process takes place in a 24 hour period. By the end of the 24 hours the tea is ready to be trucked to the twice weekly tea auction in Colombo. At the tea auction retail tea companies purchase the tea for export to their facilities in other countries where the tea is blended, bagged and distributed.