Tea Estates and Gardens

Anything for Tea: Budget Backpacking in Nilgiris

Buddies Cafe in Ooty. This cafe is the largest tea room in India, which features over 220 varieties of tea: artisanal and hand-crafted single-origin teas, orthodox blends, tisanes, and CTC dust. When I first entered the cafe, Nirmal Raj stood next to a wall of transparent glass tea canisters and opened them enthusiastically to allow customers to inhale as he spoke animatedly about each tea. After leaving my non-heated hostel, I chanced upon the cafe, searching for a warmer place to write from. As a shoestring budget backpacker, I had traveled to the Nilgiris tea-growing region on an overnight bus from Bengaluru, India, and soon found myself returning daily to Buddies Cafe.

by Anesce Dremen

Wild Forest Grown Ceylon Tea

Community Driven Tea Nestled in the Adam’s Peak mountain range of Sabaragamuwa Province, in the tiny village of Erathna, Kuruwita, […]

by Ellen Kanner

Alfred Mwase: Crafting Orthodox Teas Amid a Sea of CTC

The Satemwa Tea Estate, founded in 1923, began to revive the production of orthodox teas about 15 years ago. It is the only estate in Malawi crafting orthodox teas. Taster Alfred Mwase says, “my only experience prior to 2010 was CTC. My first tasting of specialty stimulated interest in these unique teas. Satemwa is a pioneering estate that is open to experiments with new tea cultivars, withering times, rolling techniques, oxidation times, and drying cycles.”

by Dan Bolton

Harnessing the Inherent Charm and Potential of Farm and Forest Tea

There is no doubt that in this golden age of tea quality frontier teas are precious opportunities to increase the spectrum of possibility. With the right care, everybody could win as producers gain a new source of income and the flowering of that beautiful craft-pride from focused artisanal activity. We should never forget, when tasting new tea, to exercise reverence for the passion and determination it takes to harvest and convert any form of the leaf into a finished tea.

by Kevin Gascoyne

Forest Pick Wild Tea from Manipur

Three sisters from Manipur, India, and their brother launched Forest Pick Wild Tea about two years ago. Together they organized villagers to harvest tall-grown tea trees on a schedule, arriving with portable processing equipment to make artisan oolong, black, green and white teas. “Irrespective of the market size or market opportunity, Forest Pick Wild Tea is not another start-up, but an eco-system we are creating in which all the villagers participating will benefit.” — Julie Gangte

by Aravinda Anantharaman

Anything for Tea: Budget Backpacking in Nilgiris

Wild Forest Grown Ceylon Tea

Alfred Mwase: Crafting Orthodox Teas Amid a Sea of CTC

Harnessing the Inherent Charm and Potential of Farm and Forest Tea

Forest Pick Wild Tea from Manipur

Get More Value from Your Tea: BRU Maker One