• North American Roasted Wild Rice Tea


    Canada’s version of genmaicha with an Indigenous twist

    In Japan, it’s called genmaicha; in Korea, hyeonmi-cha. Tea Horse, a company based in Thunder Bay, Ont., brings you Canada’s version of tea blended with rice: manoomincha.

    Caption: Marc Bohémier (l) and Denise Atkinson, co-founders of Tea Horse, pose in a manoomin patch in The Pas, Manitoba. All photos courtesy of Tea Horse.

    Listen to the interview
    Tea Biz’s Jessica Natale Woollard reveals a North American version of tea blended with roasted rice.
    manoomin patch in The Pas, Manitoba
    A manoomin patch growing in The Pas, Manitoba

    East and West Tea Cultures Meld in Manoomin Cha

    Tea Horse co-founders Denise Atkinson and Marc Bohémier blend their teas with Canadian wild rice, called manoomin in Atkinson’s Indigenous language.

    They developed a proprietary process to roast the wild rice, blending it with teas imported from Japan and elsewhere in Asia. The duo has launched four manoomin blends, one of which is sold through Canadian tea giant DAVIDsTEA.

    A new chai blend is in development.

    The husband-and-wife team, based in Thunder Bay, Ontario, joined us on Tea Biz to chat about their Indigenous Canadian version of rice tea.


    A conversation with Tea Horse co-founders Denise Atkinson and Marc Bohémier

    By Jessica Natale Woollard

    Inspired by Japanese genmaicha and other rice teas, Tea Horse blends tea with Canadian wild rice known as manoomin in the Ojibwe language.

    ManoominCha, a blend created by Tea Horse
    ManoominCha, created by Tea Horse

    Jessica: You have created a uniquely Canadian blend of tea. Why did you choose wild rice as an inclusion in your tea blends?

    Denise Atkinson: I’m of Obijwe heritage, Anishinaabe,* from Red Rock Indian Band. Wild rice is called “manoomin” in my language. It’s been a big part of the Anishinaabeg culture forever, for time immemorial.

    I’m somebody who always drank genmaicha for breakfast. I received a sample from a company, and it looked like it was blended with wild rice. I looked at Marc and said: we should try infusing manoomin as a tea, like a Canadian Indigenous version of genmaicha. We did some research and development, blended it with green tea, and voilà, we got this manoomincha.

    We thought, let’s show people the versatility of this beautiful Indigenous grain.

    The Ojibwe are an Indigenous people in Canada and the United States, who are part of the Anishinaabe cultural group. Their traditional territories extend from the Great Lakes.

    Tea Horse is certified with the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business.

    Jessica: How did you come to develop your proprietary roasting process?

    Marc Bohémier: I consulted with people in the coffee industry, the grain malting industry, and even the kettle corn industry. I developed a process to roast the wild rice that’s an amalgam of the different inputs I got. We can’t say more than that; the process is our secret.

    Left to right: Manoominaaboo Tisane | ManoominCha Tea | ManoominCha Dark Tea

    Jessica: Do the Anishinaabeg have a history of any tea-like beverages?

    Denise: I grew up in a traditional land-based home with my maternal grandparents. My grandmother was a trapper and a hunter and could not speak English; she only spoke her language, Ojibwe.

    She always has a pot of tea on. When we would go blueberry picking, she would pick wintergreen, which is in the mossy area of the blueberry patch. She would make Labrador tea and cedar tea for my grandpa when he had bronchial issues. We used a lot of roots and leaves, twigs, tamarack twigs. It is quite large in the Ojibwe culture to infuse berries, leaves, twigs, and roots.

    Marc: A lot of people don’t realize when the Europeans first came to places like northern Canada and the northern US, the Anishinaabeg would give them cedar tea to counteract the effects of scurvy because it’s high in vitamin C.

    Jessica: Describe the taste of your manoomincha.

    Denise: Manoomincha, our original blend, is very grassy and marine because we use Japanese green tea, and then we blend it with our roasted, kind of earthy-flavored roasted manoomin.

    We have manoomincha dark, which is blended with hojicha, a combination of roasted green tea and roasted manoomin. It has a very rich, robust flavor.

    We also have something called manoominabo, which in English means “wild rice juice.” It’s a tisane, so it is just the roasted manoomin that you infuse to make a beautiful caffeine-free tisane. It’s very comforting with a brothy flavor.

    Marc: With our roasted manoomin, we want to honor many of the Asian peoples, like the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese people, who roast barley and create boricha or mugicha. They were our inspiration for creating the manoominabo as well. Our teas fuse the east with the west, western Indigenous peoples with Indigenous peoples from the east. As many of us know in the tea world, the caretakers of ancient tea trees, like the ones that produce Pu’er from Yunan, are Indigenous groups in Asia that have been caring for these forests for millennia. We’re trying to honor all of these different Indigenous people by fusing these amazing gifts that we have all been given into different types of teas.


    *The Anishinaabeg are culturally related indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Mississaugas, Nipissing, and Algonquin peoples.

    Learn more about Tea Horse’s manoomin blends.

    This interview has been edited and condensed.


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  • Tea Retail Powers Perception

    Retail must do the heavy lifting in realigning the marketing of Indian tea. While online transactions are more common now than in past years, neighborhood kirana stores are the most commonplace Indians purchase packaged tea, accounting for 70% of sales. Supermarkets are the fastest-growing sales channel for packaged teas. Only 7% of tea is sold at tea shops that specialize in loose-leaf offerings. Household penetration is 88% and even in rural areas 75% of households now purchase packaged tea, but on average only 22% of households report spending more than INRs200 per month on tea, according to the Tea Board of India.

    • Caption: In Delhi, Mittal Teas opened in 1954. Nikita Mittal serves a cup to her father Vikram.
    Aravinda Anantharaman speaks with tea retailers on how marketing is changing the perception of tea.
    Celestè Tea Bar marketing its retail tea bar and packaged teas at a local tradeshow

    Convincing Customers to Take that First Sip

    By Aravinda Anantharaman

    On the road between Siliguri and Darjeeling, a small tea stall would beckon visitors to stop for a break as they approach Margaret’s Hope Tea Estate. The estate ran the modest stall for years, the only convenient place for tea during the three-hour journey, says Atul Asthana, managing director Goodricke Group.

    In 2016 Goodricke refurbished and rebuilt this stop to create Margaret’s Deck, a restaurant and tea lounge that overhangs the cliff and overlooks the valley. The tea lounge is now listed as the No. 1 restaurant in Kurseong on Trip Advisor. It is both a popular stop and a significant marketing asset that invites visitors to sample and savor the tea and purchase packets to take back with them.

    Nothing sells tea better than sampling. The more people touch it and try – the more they buy. Goodricke opened more lounges, Queen’s Deck in Mumbai at the iconic Tea Board of India office, another one in Mirik, near their Thurbo Tea Estate, in Kolkata and Madhya Pradesh. The middle and north Indian belts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab are important markets for the group. In Kolkata, they have found their most discerning audience. Goodricke’s roasted Darjeeling tea remains the highest-selling brand in Kolkata, a city of 15 million.

    Long a hub for the British East India Company, the site of tea auctions, and a port city, Kolkata is the tea capital of India. It is the largest city in the state of North Bengal (the same state as Darjeeling) and is adjacent to Assam. Darjeeling tea is the tea of choice for the Bengalis but Kolkata is a massive and mature market for tea. It is also one of the few cities where the diversity of India’s taste for tea is on display. Notable among the more than 100 leaf shops include Lakshimi Narayan Tea House, Tearaja, Dhruba Tea Centre, Sharda & Sons, Subodh Brothers, Star Tea, and the Karma Kettle.

    In Delhi, Mittal Teas opened in 1954 to sell a range of teas and continues to be the store of choice for connoisseurs in the capital. Nikita Mittal, who has joined the family business, speaks of how access to tea can influence customer preferences, “Every walk-in is treated like a VIP, try to give them the best experience. And once they have tasted a good quality tea, whichever they choose black, white, green, chai, they don’t like going back to the average teas. So, that’s how we try and do it – one cup at a time.”

    “There is a restaurant in Gurgaon which is associated with us,” says Nikita, “The F&B Manager takes each and every thing about his beverages so seriously. How he presents the tea, the teapot, the timer… he educates the customer that you have to take it out in three or four minutes and that if you over brew it will ruin the tea if you under brew you don’t get the flavor. Those experiences matter and people always remember something better, that when they’re having a good time, a tea or coffee really added to the experience.”

    In 2008-09, Dhiraj Arora and Priti Sen Arora started Karma Kettle in Singapore, as a restaurant serving Anglo-Indian food. The tea menu was a big part of the restaurant and its experience. They had a ringside view of the explosion of the beverage market, as brands began to offer custom blending, pairing tea and food. It was an eye-opening experience, they say. Five years later, in 2011-12, the couple decided to return to India. At that time, India was waking up to green tea. Dhiraj’s family owns and runs Cochrane Place in Kurseong, a boutique hotel with Makaibari, Ambootia, and Castleton tea gardens as neighbors. Buyers from Europe who stayed at Cochrane Place introduced Dhiraj to blending botanicals with tea. All of these experiences led them to embark on their tea journey.

    In 2013, Karma Kettle launched as a tea brand, starting with ten teas that included four blends. As a brand, it reflects the couple’s aspirations — vibrant, youthful, with a love for travel. Their teas were marketed as “voyages in a teacup.” The teas were named for favorite destinations or a mood. “We wanted to give identity to a blend; we wanted our teas to ignite a sense of wonder,” says Priti.

    Part of their success is attributed to the fact that India was not only a liberalized market, but the urban Indian was now well-traveled and keen to seek experiences, whether here or abroad. “Experience” is a word that comes up often in the conversation on marketing tea. In 2016, Priti and Dhiraj opened the Karma Kettle tearoom in Kolkata as a space for people to gather. “Tea is about community,” they say, and they hosted guests for talks, tea tasting sessions, food, and tea sessions pre-pandemic.

    Proving that access to teas need not be upscale is the story of the tea Vandis. In the Nilgiris, tea vandis or trucks were launched last year by INDCOSERVE, the government-run cooperative of small farmers and bought leaf factories – the largest in India. In an earlier interview with Tea-Biz, Supriya Sahu (IAS), CEO of INDCOSERVE, had said, “Our factories were making losses. They did not explore other avenues, newer markets. They were quite content within the space that was made available to them… The tea market is volatile; we were vulnerable. Therefore there was a need for us to kind of explore other avenues. Why not explore selling packaged teas, that can be displayed on the shelf. If you want to sell, you have to create a brand.”

    INDCO Vandis
    INDCO Vandis offer convenience and expand the distribution of INDCOSERVE’s brand.

    Sahu launched the Indco Tea House at Kattabettu and Bedford in the Nilgiris, but the striking red trucks parked at popular tourist stops in the hills are what have caught public attention. They serve tea – INDCO’s brand of tea – and snacks. “Our dream is that we should be like Café Coffee Day chain or Starbucks. Why can’t we, a home grown outlet, be like that?” Sahu had asked. INDCOSERVE’s branding and tea vandis show how even small farmers can retail and find an audience.

    Online vs. offline

    But no matter what scale or legacy, whether they have a store or long history, everyone’s now online. Despite a robust brick and mortar presence, Mittal too expanded to the online space, adopting e-commerce as an avenue for tea sales.

    The extensive proliferation of mobile phones, access to the internet, and the burgeoning of smartphones have had a definite impact on the Indian consumer. It has also meant that it’s no longer the urban Indian who is the end consumer but significantly includes those who live in smaller towns, who aspire to a different way of life, and who can access products as quickly as an urbanite. The opening of markets has impacted consumption patterns, and it has led to several small brands coming up without the need to invest heavily in marketing.

    However, e-commerce is not just a platform for brands. Producers now find that they too can retail. Luxmi Tea is one of such brands that branched into digital with the pandemic. In an earlier interview, Rudra Chatterjee, managing director of Luxmi Tea, had said, “This was the first time that we sold tea directly to consumers. And the reaction is amazing because, after all as growers of tea, it’s great to hear from someone who’s drinking that tea at home. Also, for us to get feedback one week or two weeks after we produce the tea… questions on how to brew the tea, pictures of how they are drinking their tea … It’s been energizing for me and my colleagues who are growing the tea in the estate.”

    Jagjeet Kandal, industry veteran and currently Country Head, IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative, endorses it, “Producers are at the mercy of the market… If the market doesn’t pay them, what are you doing? You can’t keep blaming the market. As a businessman, you have to say, I will get out or change the business model. Every estate should put out 5-10% in packets.” It takes very little investment if one leverages online channels. If more producers did that, it could create the ripples of change because e-commerce and digital marketing have opened the tea market, as it did other FMCG products.

    But there’s another side to this story. While starting digital, Karma Kettle soon opened a tearoom in Kolkata. Here lies another lesson: marketing tea is not exclusively choosing digital or offline but a blend of both.

    Tea vs. blends

    Karma Kettle does not own a tea garden. They see this as an advantage in the teas they bring their consumers. From tea farmers to suppliers of herbs and botanicals, they continue to service connoisseurs alongside those who seek flavored blends. Today, they have 100 tea blends.

    The distinction in the market segment is essential. In Assam, Raj Barooah, after entering his family’s tea business, was attracted to the idea of retailing. He eventually started Rujani Tea, a specialty tea brand. In a blog post, he writes that 1999 and 2006 were the worst period for the tea industry in nearly a century. “Prices fell, productivity was low, and demand for CTC teas in the Indian market plunged. It was very, very difficult to keep going.”

    From 2007 onwards, Barooah pursued the commodity trade, increasing his factory’s capacity. “But there was no joy in it for me. It brought back the old dream of doing something different, of creating a brand.” Traveling to China changed how he viewed the tea trade and his views on selling directly to consumers. Raj launched Rujani, named for his two daughters, as a brand that would represent the best whole leaf teas made at Aideobarie. Raj attempted to break the mold, assuming that Assam teas are CTC teas.

    The pandemic certainly changed how producers and brands view the domestic market. In 2020, the lockdown was announced just as north India geared to harvest its first flush. Closing borders, stores, and hospitality meant that consumers turned online. And producers and brands took steps to meet them here.

    Celestè was born during the pandemic, started by Anubha Jawar, who grew up amid tea in Siliguri. Celeste’s blends are their USP, with ingredients chosen to make them palatable to the Indian consumer. Here too, there is a focus on the experience. Celestè teas come in lovely packaging, but Anubha quickly points out that packaging is only part of the experience.

    Anubha Jawar

    She would instead focus on conscious consumption, whether in the material used to package the teas, the tea bags, or the quality of ingredients used.

    Celestè, like Karma Kettle, has succeeded in making tea appealing to a younger market by being a vibrant brand, more invested in flavors rather than tea’s snob value. Because that’s the other problem, Indian marketers will have to address — creating a new market for tea among India’s youth, something that coffee has succeeded in and will be hard to replace.

    Coffee’s success in India is credited to Cafè Coffee Day (CCD), a brand started by Chikmagalur coffee planter Siddhartha VG. Back in the late 90s, he set up “cyber cafes,” which were spaces where one could buy coffee and surf the internet. The personal computer and the internet had not increased in homes yet, so this was a huge success. CCD became a chosen hangout spot for the young and continues to be a popular option 20 years later, despite the arrival of Starbucks. Jagjeet points out another learning from coffee. “See what coffee did,” he says. “They never boast of the amount of coffee they sold, they boast of tastes… this how they become icons. They are selling on experience.”

    Chaayos and Chai Point are brands that constructed hundreds of outlets across the country, offering a range of teas and snacks. The audience for these are office goers who need a quick bite and want a reasonably good cup of chai. Both brands also offer chai in takeaway flasks that preserve the heat. A quick look at the menu points to what Indian consumers want — chai and green tea.

    The newest brand to enter the fray is Teas from India, launched in December 2021 by Amalgamated Plantations Limited. “Our journey with tea is intertwined with the history of tea in India. With our 150 + years of experience and expertise, no one is better placed to unleash tea’s potential by bringing the best from bush to cup. Combining tradition and innovation to put quality first, our vision is to grow profitably and sustainably by serving as the industry pioneer of tea in India. In doing so, we wish to contribute and be present in the entire value chain of tea,” says Vikram Gulia, Managing Director at APPL.

    APPL already had popular brands, some named for its estates, like Hattigor, which caters to the suburban and rural heartland and northern markets, and Majuli Mist; a roasted tea made for the West Bengal market. APPL launched Teas from India, targeting the millennial shopper looking for exclusivity and willing to pay the price for it.

    Teas from India was chosen as the name to represent APPL’s legacy and the significant search engine advantages it offers, which is helpful as it is marketed more heavily on digital platforms rather than offline channels. The brand’s raison d’être is to showcase the diversity of India’s tea regions by acknowledging them, whether Darjeeling and Assam or the Nilgiris and Dooars and even Himachal and Sikkim. And taking cognizance of consumer preference, they offer a range of blends.

    In the past regional preferences could be addressed by packaging various grades. Product diversification is more complex today, leading producers to keep up with trends — seen with the proliferation of butterfly pea flower tisane, turmeric blends, and, more recently, immunity teas.

    The pandemic jumpstarted the category of immunity teas, and nearly every brand quickly added it to their portfolio, catering to a health-conscious Indian segment.

    Green tea and chai

    Green tea has risen in popularity in the last ten years; although it has been around for longer, it was made for an export base. Its marketing has been one of the recent successes tea has enjoyed, and the marketing narrative has hinged on its supposed properties to detox and help its drinkers enjoy wellness. Both Tata Consumer Products and Hindustan Unilever led the green tea marketing with TVCs, ads, and young Bollywood actors as ambassadors, emphasizing the influence mass media and big brands have in shaping consumer preferences.

    But this has not been leveraged in creating a market for Assam orthodox tea. Ajay Jalan of Mokalbari Tea Estate and Chairman, Tea Association of India, says, “The cup that Assam produces — most of the consumers are not aware of it. We realize that more we give it to someone and get a repeat enquiry. The aroma and malty flavor that Assam teas have is not seen elsewhere. The market has blended teas of different origins and the true flavor of Assam tea is lost.” He adds that direct to consumer has started in a small way, but gardens don’t have the kind of resources it needs nor the marketing insight.

    The market share lies with Tata Consumer Products, Hindustan Unilever, and Wagh Bakri. They continue to influence consumer preferences. Says Kandal, “The big packeteers are the ones who create the impression with the junta. Tea needs to be upscaled at even the lowest price point. Why are they not looking at explaining the value that even the cheapest tea brings to the consumer? If the poorest of the poor is buying it, he gets some value. Can they talk about the value?”

    Jalan agrees, “The teas with major packeteers have been so commoditized that it does not encourage consumers to have more cups. Per capita consumption is still low.” He speaks of the need for a digital platform to promote Indian teas within the domestic and international markets. The Tea Association of India has proposed a Public-Private Partnership model, with producers and the tea board participating in creating the platform that will actively promote specialty tea.

    Every tea producer recognizes the need to diversify and meet consumers halfway. Goodricke started making masala tea post-COVID. Their most recent release is a range of iced teas. Made from green tea sourced from their gardens, Badamtam and Barnesbeg, and bottled in glass, they see a successful pilot run in Delhi with Kolkata to follow. Dorje Teas in Darjeeling has launched a cold brew for the domestic market, Gopaldhara is making red oolongs, and Woolah in Assam is making bagless tea dips… there is diversification and innovation taking place, which may be the shift in India’s tea narrative.

    But what of the consumer? Are they ready for a new way of drinking and enjoying tea? On the one hand, more than 50% of tea drinkers are from rural India, for whom price is a deciding factor. On the other hand, millennials with infamously short attention spans need to be hooked in the first 10 seconds of a post or a reel. The problem again returns to which India and which segment brands are pursuing. There is no one-size-fits-all formula. As many varieties of tea that the country produces, so too are the pockets that make up its markets.

    What has changed is really access, anyone can order tea from anywhere in India, and more often than not, two-day delivery is possible.

    Jagjeet Kandal

    “Tea needs to be upscaled at even the lowest price point. Why are brands not looking at explaining the value that even the cheapest tea brings to the consumer? If the poorest of the poor is buying it, he gets some value. Can they talk about the value?

    – Jagjeet Kandal, IDH The Sustainable Trade Initiative

    Stories that sell

    Rujani’s Raj Barooah chose to brand his leaves as whole leaf and not specialty tea. In his blog post, he writes, “I have come to realize that every specialty tea has to have a story behind it, sometimes true and sometimes, a better story than the tea. The success of this storytelling as a means to market the tea is evident, and has played an important role in birthing the category of specialty tea.”

    For brands, “stories” are the marketing hook. And there are plenty of stories from the tea lands of India, whether history, conservation, culture, communities, or even ghost stories! But few have been able to exploit these stories memorably. The narrative continues to be half-hearted rather than sustained attempts to tell India’s story even though the customer seems eager to hear more.

    Perhaps only Darjeeling has succeeded in offering customers a sufficiently intriguing story. There are many stories, from the story of young Margaret, who fell in love with the estate her father ran and promised to return but didn’t. Or, Jungpana and how it got its name from the dying and thirsty nobleman. One raconteur has used his skill to put his garden on the map: Rajah Banerjee, the former owner of the Makaibari tea estate.

    When Rajah speaks of Darjeeling, it’s to describe it as a “magical, mystical land.” Rajah’s family-owned Makaibari for several generations, and in 1970, Rajah came home from England, where he was studying. In a tale he narrates expertly, he talks about how he felt the trees were calling to him to save them. One listens raptly as he speaks because he tells the story so well. Makaibari tea has reached the Queen of England in its time if one must measure its brand success. As a brand, it was ‘organic’ before that became a buzzword and ‘sustainable’ before we had even started talking about it.

    “I was just having a love affair with this tract of land,” he says. “If you are passionate about whatever you do, whatever you’re committed to, you can market it. No tea is unsaleable. Every gram of tea can be sold. What you have to do is make that extra yardage to find a home for it.”

    Makaibari has been a rare Darjeeling garden to market early to a domestic base. Rajah recounts being away in Berlin when he was at a store and saw a packet of tea that claimed to be Darjeeling but was “packed in Sri Lanka.” Before Darjeeling was granted protection of the European Union’s GI (Geographical Indication), it showed him how much had been given away in the opportunity.

    In Darjeeling, Rajah opened up Makaibari to visitors. On weekends, he says, tourists arrived in large numbers, and every visitor got a tour of the factory and had a taste of tea. Everyone who walked out left buying a packet of tea. It was effortless marketing and helped build the brand. It was an experience people remembered.

    For the mass market, tea has been sold on other narratives. One of the early TVCs for HUL’s Taj Mahal Tea featured tabla maestro, Zakir Hussain, endorsing the tea. Keeping the brand’s link to classical music intact, the most recent commercial for the Taj Mahal brand asks consumers to make time for tea even as classical music plays on, appealing to refined tastes.

    Both TCPL and HUL have sought storylines that appeal to a higher ideal. For Tata, the Jaago re campaign was introduced in 2008 and is still in use. It started as a wake-up call to vote in the elections and expanded to various civic issues. HUL’s advertising covers many social issues, whether secularism, inclusion, or speaking up. Emotion and nostalgia continue to be compelling marketing narratives, especially for chai.

    The challenge for new brands is in the lack of resources to match these expensive ad campaigns and find a narrative that is emotive and memorable and their own.

    Because the best farm stories come from producers themselves, they are beginning to realize the interest consumers have in getting a peek into the world where their tea is grown and manufactured. And gardens are rich with these stories. Whether in how people live and work, flora and fauna, the plants, the factory… tea gardens are little worlds unto themselves; everything is potentially a story. An elephant herd passing through makes us stop and gasp with wonder; the paw print of a leopard on a muddy track is fascinating, as much as the journey of the leaf from the field, through the machines, and out.

    The big question

    Even as we speak of how digital is changing and transforming how consumers find, source, and access new teas, Raj Barooah voices caution. Sales are taking place on Amazon’s marketplaces, not the brand’s website. He points out. “Single digital websites like Rujani are not drawing traction. People prefer marketplaces. That’s where the whole thing is tilting. Even the bigger tea brands online are selling mostly on Amazon. “ He cites the story of Teavana in the US, the tea brand founded in 1997, bootstrapped but eventually reaching IPO and then bought by Starbucks for $620 million. “What became of Teavana? It peaked in success before a slump.” One reason cited is that its heavily retail presence could not keep up with online brands like DAVIDsTEA. “Are we still marketing tea?” asks Raj. “No one has found the growth curve. If Starbucks couldn’t, we are in serious trouble. There is a systemic problem in retailing tea. That’s the answer to the problem in marketing tea.”

    “It is simple,” says Jagjeet Kandal. “Very, very simple. How do you move Indian consumption from the 780g? Get a hundred people in the room. Give them one question. Because there’s a role for the government to play in that, there’s a role for the marketeers to play there. And there’s a role for the producers. If we answer that question, we will have a solution.”

    Maybe that’s the question, not whether people know about tea, or know how to source and brew it, and are willing to spend more on a better tea. Perhaps India’s tea marketing should begin with a single task of increasing consumption by one cup a day. 

    Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea (Part 1)

    Indian legislators are currently considering a draft Tea (Promotion and Development) Bill to remove colonial-era provisions regulating tea and re-direct the Tea Board of India’s resources to expand existing markets and promote tea domestically. Tea Biz explores the challenges and opportunities of marketing Indian tea by examining:

    • A legacy of marketing tea as a blended, heavily spiced low-cost commodity beverage for the masses.
    • The rise of hundreds of direct-to-consumer (DTC) tea brands that rely on e-commerce as a promising and accessible retail platform.
    • Expanding choices available to tea lovers and how consumer preferences have moved beyond chai.
    Margaret’s Hope Tea Lounge grew from a humble roadside tea stall to become a marketing powerhouse.

    Nostalgia as a Trope in Marketing Tea

    By Ramya Ramamurty | Branded in History

    Nostalgia in marketing can be a double-edged sword – it may be twee to focus on quaint vintage designs or visual representation. It can also seem like a shamelessly exploitative marketing tool – to appeal to consumers in a way that borders on manipulative, like the low-hanging fruit of emotional recall. But when wielded correctly, it can be a lyrical exhortation to a more haloed historical era, to peddle something in the present by pointing out that the past is not all that different. It may inspire consumers to realize that in fact, in a lot of aspects, we are similar to our forefathers in what we want from life right down to how we eat and drink.

    Taj Mahal tea has a rich storied advertising past that it frequently refers to in its current advertising. We don’t even have to go that far back. I doubt anyone can forget the visuals of the 1980s ad featuring Ustad Zakir Hussain’s head bobbing to the scintillating beat of his table and ending with the tagline “Wah, Taj!” It’s remarkable how the brand managed to forge a connection between a virtuoso performance by a percussionist maestro of classical Hindustani music, and the idea that the tea is restorative, as endorsed by an icon like him. But it clearly worked and one thing brand managers know is not to fix something that ain’t broke. In fact, things have come full circle with recent ads by Swiggy actually referencing this ad. 

    I think the use of nostalgia works if the brand is trying to spotlight a value that was successfully evoked in the past. It would almost be criminal not to leverage their own history. It is also a strategic way to ensure that consumers realize that their brand has a rich heritage in successfully creating and selling a great product. For instance, Wagh Bakri Chai was started 107 years back and may want its consumers to know that they have been around all this while, or that they started as a small tea brand inspired by Gandhian ideology way back when.

    I think in the case of tea, nostalgia confers an immediate connection and grips the public imagination – reminding us of the tea we drank with our family, with friends, in decades past. It is still one of the first drinks we offer visitors and is a traditional beverage linked to Indianness despite its colonial origins, so it would make sense to leverage that in marketing it.


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  • India: What has Changed?

    India produces 20% of the world’s tea. Production, however, has stagnated for years. Costs are up, and prices and exports are flat. Professional tasters report a decline in quality. Marketing tea to domestic consumers is a promising way to move past the doldrums. Tea is found in every household and Indians drink an average of two cups per person per day, consuming 90% of the tea grown there — but mainly purchase lower grades. Per capita consumption is modest at 840 grams due to a preference for tea in blends. Until recently, India exported virtually all its best teas. Tea discovery there is discouraged as imports from China, Taiwan, and Japan are expensive due to high tariffs, but rising affluence is overcoming these obstacles.

    • Caption: Jagjeet Kandal, country head, IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative
    Aravinda Anantharaman speaks with Jagjeet Kandal at IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative
    Tea by the Lake Mirik
    The Goodricke Lounge by Lake Mirik

    Realigning the Marketing of Indian Tea

    By Aravinda Anantharaman

    State Seal of India

    “When you look back, let’s say 30, 40 years, what has changed in the tea market? That’s the question we need to ask. And to me, there has been no great, no major earth-shattering change. Yes, we went from dabbas to paper boxes, tea bags, then poly packs… stuff like that. But the image of tea has not changed at all. And that, I think, is the basis of many problems,” says industry veteran Jagjeet Kandal, now country head, IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative.

    Indian legislators are currently considering a draft Tea (Promotion and Development) Bill to remove colonial-era provisions regulating tea and re-direct the Tea Board of India’s resources to expand existing markets and promote tea domestically.

    In this report, Tea Biz explores the challenges and opportunities of marketing Indian tea by examining:

    • A legacy of marketing tea as a blended, heavily spiced low-cost commodity beverage for the masses.
    • The rise of hundreds of direct-to-consumer (DTC) tea brands that rely on e-commerce as a promising and accessible retail platform.
    • Expanding choices available to tea lovers and how consumer preferences have moved beyond chai.

    Price as a factor

    “I think marketers need to take some of that blame because what they’ve done is made tea a common man’s drink. It has been marketed as the cheapest drink. When you market anything as cheap, it’s going to be very difficult to take that perception people’s mind and then tell them to come and pay more for it. So it was a short-term strategy or whenever this whole marketing stint started, but that’s the basis of what needs to change,” says Kandal.

    Price became a factor in sales, trumping taste. Brands fought on price. Across the country, orthodox tea is not consumed by the masses. South India, in particular, favors dust-grade teas. But every producer and every brand owner talks about how the per cup cost between a mediocre tea and a higher quality tea differs by only a few rupees. The point is convincing, but that message has not been communicated to consumers.

    New to tea

    A century after exports surged, generating substantial wealth, India was still not a big tea market. Seventy years ago, few Indians had ever tasted tea. In contrast, the Chinese have kept tea in their homes for 5,000 years.

    Like other plantation colonies, tea was cultivated in India to cater to demand in Europe. Wars and economic slumps disrupted trade, leading to a glut of tea that forced England to find new markets. The British turned expertly to India’s domestic population, marketing aggressively and creating a tea culture. It was phenomenally successful as tea is now an Indian legacy with deep cultural connotations.

    India was largely rural in 1960, with 82% of the population of 370 million housed away from cities. Household consumption as a percent of India’s gross domestic product peaked that year at 87.4% percent. Manufacturing was focused on domestic needs, and exports consisted mainly of raw goods. Tea was a vital source of foreign income.

    In 1960 India exported 195 m.kgs of tea and consumed 115 m.kgs. Ten years later, exports remained flat at 200 m.kgs, while domestic consumption had increased to 212 m.kgs. Today Indian consumers drink 90% of the tea it produces totaling a billion kilos in 2020.

    One would expect that this has reduced the producers’ dependence on the export market. It has not. But given how the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, marketing costs, and now, war, have impacted trade, freight costs, and exports, the need to cultivate and nurture the domestic market has never been more urgent. There’s a need to nudge consumers towards better quality, higher-priced teas and even specialty tea. What producers seek is 1) convince consumers to look beyond CTC and chai, and even if they must stick to CTC, purchase a better-quality product at a marginally higher cost; and 2) how to increase per capita consumption by at least 100g from its current 750-850g per year.

    There has been news of change brewing, with the Tea Board of India finally saying that they will no longer be a regulator but instead become a body that will market and promote tea. It’s a return to the Board’s original mandate, lost along the way and resurfacing now due to producers’ continuous demands. The Tea Board’s challenge will be to address India’s complex market. 

    Lessons from the past: The rise of packaged and branded tea

    In the 1980s, television emerged as a mass media platform financed by consumer interest in packaged goods. That same decade, Tata Tea, helmed by Darbari Seth and Krishna Kumar, transitioned from bulk sales to branded tea from company gardens. Tata spent large sums marketing Tata Tea, Chakra Gold, and Tetley.

    In 1984, Brooke Bond, India’s most popular and – certainly the oldest brand was acquired by Unilever. They had already diversified and merged with Liebig in 1968, generating $1 billion annually in sales. In 1984 PG Tips held 28% of the UK tea market by sales, and Tetley held 8%. Unilever, then the world’s largest packaged goods company, had acquired Lipton in 1977 but had no UK brands. In October 1984, Unilever spent $480 million to acquire 150 million shares, concluding a protracted and unfriendly takeover of Brooke Bond. Subsidiary Hindustan Unilever Ltd., (HUL) based in Mumbai, reported $5.3 billion in annual revenue in 2020.

    Privately held Wagh Bakri, founded in 1919 and based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, sold loose tea in wholesale and retail outlets until 1980 when it began distributing packaged tea. The company invests 10% of revenue on advertising has since grown to become India’s third nationally distributed packaged tea brand  

    In 1985, Atul Asthana, currently Managing Director, joined the Goodricke Group. The group was formed in 1978 and now owns 29 gardens in Darjeeling, Assam, and the Dooars. Some of the most prized teas in the world come from the Goodricke portfolio, including Margaret’s Hope and Castleton in Darjeeling. “Goodricke had to diversify,” says Asthana. At first, the company started packaging tea in 250g and 500g packets, with each of their gardens keeping aside a percentage of production to go into retail. Their focus was on serving the north and east India markets.

    “It is different from buying other teas. When you buy from auctions, the tea is already 4-6 weeks old. From there it goes to the warehouse and then on to the blenders. When we pack our teas, it’s fresher, it’s more immediate and it reaches consumer quickly,” said Asthana.

    Gardens have a fantastic advantage for retail, when going direct to consumer: By bypassing the auctions, they could bring consumers a fresher tea. Already leveraged by brands like Lipton, whose tagline was “direct from tea garden to the teapot,” it is surprising that more gardens did not take this up and aggressively brand and market their teas. The reason is that the wholesale market was robust, Asthana explains. In the 1980s, a heyday for the tea industry, demand outstripped supply. As Asthana says, everything that was being produced found a market. The Soviet Union absorbed all the tea produced in India. Few gardens found a need to retail to a domestic market.

    With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the tea industry, which had expanded to produce large volumes of tea, now struggled. As the share of exports declined, the domestic market discovered tea. Inexpensive and widely available, tea was a daily beverage that was easy to make and reasonably addictive. Before packaged teas, vendors sold loose-leaf in broken grades as blends customized to suit customer preferences (and local water conditions). Packaged blends delivered consistent taste, were cleaner and remained fresh in storage. Packaging was more appealing and convenient. Sales increased during the 1980s and 90s as the preference for branded tea grew. Ultimately a combination of factors, including higher disposable income, the proliferation of television, and other forms of advertising, along with the move toward trade liberalization. The only hitch was that this market was still extremely price-sensitive.

    Chill Out with Chai
    Ad for new iced tea range from Goodricke

    “The wholesale market was robust in the 1980s, a heyday for the tea industry, demand outstripped supply. Everything that was being produced found a market. The Soviet Union absorbed all the tea produced in India. Few gardens found a need to retail to a domestic market..

    – Atul Asthana, Managing Director, Goodricke Group

    Next

    • We end the two-part series with the questions needed to solve the mammoth task of rebranding the industry and realigning the domestic market toward quality tea.
    Margaret's Hope at Sunset
    Sunset at Margaret’s Deck, Kurseong, a tea lounge operated by the Goodricke group

    How Tea Came to be Swadeshi

    Swadesh was the call for independence – it translates roughly as our ‘own country.’ Mahatma Gandhi promoted swadeshi products to build national pride and self-reliance.

    By Ramya Ramamurty 

    Tea was planted by the British in India to ensure an optional country of origin for their favorite beverage. China was the leading tea producer at the time. Tea plantations in India were an astute way for the British East India Company to de-risk this commodity in case the balance of trade with China was threatened by war or insurgency. 

    As the chapter on ‘Snacks and Biscuits’ in my second book Branded in History mentions, tea was seen as a ‘drug food’, and planted in India in Assam, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu. Optimal conditions, conducive for the growth of tea, meant adequate rainfall, the right pH of the soil, and cool temperatures by Indian standards. The tea plantations were fairly oppressive under the colonial powers – indenture was common as a way to supply low-cost labor to the expanding plantations. But there were a few brands that came up in India with indigenous tea bushes or entrepreneurs.

    In 1823, Robert Bruce, a Scot who was wandering in the upper Brahmaputra Valley, near Rangpur in Assam, came across some wild bushes that changed the tea industry forever – it was the first discovery of indigenous tea. The Chinese imports had not taken as well as the British had hoped because of the summer heat in India. A couple of years later, 12 chests of Assam tea were sold for the first time at London auctions, paving the way for the foundation of the first tea plantation company in India: Assam Company India Ltd., (ACIL). The company was founded in London in 1839 and although they focused on tea, the management, which included dignitaries like Charles Alexander Bruce and Prince Dwarkanath Tagore, wanted to keep options open to trade in other commodities like lime, coal or oil so the word tea was not referred to in its name. The company is still around, with its registered office in Kolkata, off Bentinck Road, named after Lord William Bentinck who was the Governor General who set up the first tea committee in Calcutta.

    Another company that was born in colonial India and survived the various political upheavals and is still going strong is Wagh Bakri. Its founder Narandas Desai owned 500 acres of a tea estate in South Africa. His experience of racism there forced him to move back home to India with nothing more than a few valuables and a reference letter from Gandhi, in which Desai was hailed as an honest and experienced tea planter in South Africa. Desai started the Wagh Bakri Tea Company with a retail shop in Ahmedabad in 1915 with a logo espousing their values of equality. It showed a wagh (tiger symbolizing the upper class) drinking tea from the same cup in harmony with the bakri (goat) lower class. These are just two of the brands that launched in that era. Clearly tea took off as India is now the second largest tea producer worldwide, with 13,000 tea gardens, employing more than two million people.

    Back in the pre-independence era, tea drinking became more acceptable in certain strata of society, and in those pockets, it replaced alcohol as a social lubricant. By the 1940s, as calls for Indian independence reached fever pitch – tea was seen as synonymous with colonial oppression. Notably, Gandhi discouraged Indians from drinking it as he felt it legitimized British presence in the country. British tea brands like Lipton, Twinings or Tetley that were being patronized by the British in India were replaced by the local Assam and Darjeeling teas that became more popular as we moved to Swadeshi.


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  • UK Tea Academy

    Co-founder and Director of Studies Jane Pettigrew describes the remarkable evolution of the UK Tea Academy into an innovative global tea education resource that has emerged from the chaos of COVID-19.

    • Caption: Jane Pettigrew, author, educator, historian, and tea retail expert

    Hear the Interview

    Jane Pettigrew and Suranga Perera on how the UK Tea Academy evolved to meet challenges posed by the pandemic
    Jane Pettigrew at the UKTA's launch party at the Cafe Royal in January 2016.
    Jane Pettigrew at the UKTA’s launch party at the Cafe Royal in January 2016.

    Online Adaptations Enhance and Expand Tea Education

    By Dananjaya Silva | PMD Tea

    The United Kingdom Tea Academy is recognized as a world authority for online tea education. Staffed by professional tutors the academy offers courses from beginner to advanced. I sit down with Co-founder and director of studies Jane Pettigrew, who is a leading author and speaker on tea, along with Suranga Perera, the chief instructor of the Ceylon tea program, who counts over 20 years of experience in tea and is the former CEO of Ceylon Tea Brokers PLC.

    UK Tea Academy

    Dananjaya Silva: Will you explain the essential role that is performed by UKTA in the growth and expansion of specialty tea?

    I think that what we’re doing is actually raising awareness amongst consumers of the possibilities of drinking better tea and also helping food service employees to deliver better tea and to know more about the sort of tea we’re hoping they will serve. 

    There’s an awful lot of people amongst the general public, but also working in restaurants and hotels and tea lounges, coffee bars, etc., who really don’t ever stop to think about tea as a suitable offering for what they’re doing. 

    And so I’m afraid tea has always been treated as a bit of a loss leader, a second cousin — twice removed. 

    It’s never really featured in a lot of people’s minds. Our aim is to raise people’s awareness of the fact that there is so much more than paper teabags. 

    Suranga Perera
    Suranga Perera

    “We have created a very, very exciting master class for Ceylon Tea where we will be tasting roughly 80 teas. Some of the sessions are live at the factory so that the audience can see the production line and talk with factory owners and managers for a greater understanding.

    – Suranga Perera

    Dananjaya: Specialty tea is growing in popularity and there are more tea houses being established. Who are the courses that you offer aimed at and how do you deliver these courses? 

    Jane: So the people we aim at are specifically food and beverage. But of course, we are also found online by people who just love tea. About 15 years ago, shortly after the new Millennium up to about 2005, things really started to change. China opened up and people began drinking more Chinese tea again. 

    And a lot of completely non-tea people came into the tea business. There are many people who have been working in tea for a very long time, and I think a lot of these new people came into tea from just a completely different direction, either with outside experience and a business degree or because they traveled and they’d come across Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese teas that they couldn’t get here. 

    Some of those people opened tea businesses so that they would make those teas available.

    And as more people learned about teas, cafes, restaurants and hotel lounges started serving more teas, and they all began to realize that they actually didn’t know very much about tea. 

    So we try to be at least one step ahead, particularly with food service operations, to give them an insight into the different categories of tea which they’ve never heard about. We help them understand fine teas and help them brew the tea properly. We also help them answer clients’ questions about caffeine and why tea is good for us, and to talk about the different flavors. 

    I mean there is just so much to know, which obviously raises the profile of a really good restaurant or tea lounge or even a coffee bar. 

    In the past, we were classroom-based here in London which meant that people flew in to find us and sit with us in the classroom. Because of COVID, we had to reinvent ourselves into a completely online business. 

    There have been a lot of advantages of actually doing that. We of course now can reach people absolutely anywhere in the world. 

    We try to gear our courses in two different time zones because if we’re teaching in Asia, they’re eight hours ahead, and if we’re teaching in West Coast America, we’re eight hours behind. So we try and find times that suit the different markets, which seems to be working really well. Instead of teaching for a whole day, now we teach in three-hour chunks or less, and the three hours absolutely fly by. Quite a lot of our courses include brewing together, discussing flavor and aroma profiles together, learning to talk about tea, and sound exciting. 

    There’s just so much to this that people gradually get very drawn in, and once they start with us, they tend to go through the different levels. 

    Dananjaya: You mentioned that it’s a global course. How does someone sitting in Australia or New Zealand receive those samples? Could you take us through the process?

    Well, yes, of course. Our foundation level, what we call Tea Champion is taught in two segments, practical and sensory. We don’t have so many teas going out for that course.

    For our Tea Sommelier class, which is the second level up we send out something like 170 teas. We’re not drinking all of those. We add things in for little quizzes on dry leaf recognition and for blind tastings. 

    We try to do as much as we used to do in the classroom, but of course, we have to plan ahead and allow a good month to get teas out — and not just to far off places but actually into Europe, which has since Brexit been a bit of a problem. So then we send them the recording of a class or event and they can listen along on their own and brew the teas on their own time.

    We have a brilliant team now who are constantly packing teas for the next course. The students keep in touch with us to let us know whether or not they’ve received the teas. So with good planning and “military precision,” we can actually do this. 

    Dananjaya: So by the sounds of it, although COVID had a massive negative impact around the world for your organization, it’s actually allowed you to reinvent yourself and have a much wider scope, hasn’t it? 

    Jane: It’s been amazing Dananjaya because when we were teaching in class, particularly with the more advanced class, it was very, very intensive. We went through lots of material in four days, maybe with a day off in the middle, but we had to do it like that because people were flying in specially and they couldn’t keep coming back for the class. 

    They did well, but I think it was an awful lot of material for them to take in and with less time for revision, quizzes, and games. 

    So now that we’re teaching online, we can actually spread the classes out over four weeks, six weeks, and weekends, whatever we want to do. There is a longer gap between each module and the students are now brewing the teas themselves, which they never did in the classroom, and that means that they actually build up a much closer personal relationship with the tea. 

    And they have enough tea to brew more than once, so they’re getting a lot more, I think, that we delivered in the classroom. I’ve been running quite a lot of exams individually online, talking for about three hours. The results that we’ve been getting since we began teaching online have been absolutely phenomenal. You know, some people are absolutely word perfect. I think it is because they’ve had more time to build up not just their understanding, but their passion for tea. It’s not hard to develop a passion for tea. Everybody gets caught up in the whole thing.

    Dananjaya: Yes, there’s so much to explore. What you’re saying is that participants needed to let the information brew for a while.

    Jane: Yes, it’s assimilating it and making sure you’ve really understood it, and if they haven’t, having the time to go back and ask more questions. What we aim to do is give people the tools they need to go off on their own tea journey.

    This is particularly true of the lower-level class. It is absolutely essential because tea is difficult to learn on your own. There’s a lot of stuff out there now, more than there used to be, but it’s still quite confusing if you don’t get the basics absolutely clear. We can then introduce the higher-level classes with some of the most amazing teas from all around the world. People just can’t believe the many options.

    Ceylon Tea Masterclass and Diploma

    Dananjaya: The UK Tea Academy is relaunching the Ceylon Tea Diploma course in July can you explain what the new course entails?

    Suranga Perera: As Jane said, the main objective is to bridge that gap between the consumer and the producer. We have created a very, very exciting master class for Ceylon Tea. We have got some very exciting teas and gone into great depth. It’s roughly 10 hours long

     The first session will be one hour. We will be tasting one or two teas just to break the ice and get people moving, and we’ll be talking about the history, of Ceylon teas. Then a current overview of production and discussions about certifications and Ceylon Lion logo in particular. There is a segment on ozone-friendly teas a discussion about the employment that Ceylon tea provides and an explanation of the auction system. 

    The second session is three hours long and covers what are known as the “high-grown” tea gardens on the island. There are some teas that we are tasting for the first time. For example, we are featuring a Mattekelle Golden Curl from a Japanese clone that is extremely flavorful, and quite different. Few have tested and tried it out. In this masterclass, we will be tasting roughly 80 teas. 

    The third session is also three hours long. it will focus on low-grown teas. We will cover teas from Sabaragamuwa, Galle, Deniyaya, Matugama, and other tea producing subdistricts. Having been a broker for 21 years I worked with these factories very, very closely and personally tasted these teas and picked the best at the time. Because teas change all the time due to weather and various reasons, we need to pick the right teas for the current season. We want to make it as current as possible and as precious as possible so it’s a dynamic masterclass. There are eight teas in this session to be tasted at home by participants.

    The fourth and last session is about specialties, amazing teas that are not readily available. We see that a lot of factories are now getting into manufacturing specialties from which we have picked up the best available. Several of these factories are so, so, exciting, so authentic, so organic.

    Some of the sessions are live at the factory so that the audience can see the production line and talk with factory owners and managers for greater understanding. 

    Bridging the gap to the best of our ability is what we are trying to do with this masterclass.

    London-based Dananjaya Silva is the managing director of PMD Tea and a fourth-generation tea man whose family business, P.M. David Silva & Sons date to 1945 during the Plantation Raj in Ceylon’s Dimbula Valley. The company was founded on Brunswick Estate in the fertile Maskeliya Valley as a small independent Tea shop for tea plantation workers to gather, relax and enjoy a quality cup of tea.

    Related

    Outstanding Education for Tea Professionals and Enthusiasts

    The UK Tea Academy was established in 2015 to raise the standards of tea service in hospitality. One of the UKTA founders and director of studies, Jane Pettigrew, is a passionate advocate of high-quality tea, prepared correctly to draw the best flavor from the leaf. Jane is among the best-known and most highly respected professionals in the tea world. She has worked as a writer and educator for more than 35 years and is tirelessly committed to sharing her knowledge of tea with anyone who has an appreciation for this fabulous leaf. She teaches all over the world, has written 17 books on tea, and was awarded a BEM (British Empire Medal) for services to the tea industry.

    A certificate from the UKTA is recognized in the hospitality industry as representing a high level of achievement and means the holder has attained a deep understanding and serious appreciation of quality tea. On completion of the introductory Level 1: Tea Champion, most of our students are inclined to develop an even greater knowledge of this fascinating world and enroll in Level 2: Tea Sommelier. Some go even further, to the ultimate challenge of Level 3: Tea Diploma.

    UKTA Tutors
    Tea experts living in the United Kingdom teaching live webinars

    Jane PettigrewSam KimminsKate Popham
    Dr. Tim BondBeverly-Claire WainwrightCarri Hecks
    Asako StewardAlex ProbynSunjin Lee
    Chau-Jean LinEunice PallotJuyan Webster

    Licensed Tutors
    Teaching UKTA courses online in other languages

    HyunSei Yu, South KoreaIsaline Lannoy, FrancePilar Serrano, Spain
    Sabine Gullatz, GermanyStefania Gilardi, Italy
    Asako Steward, JapanGabriella Scarpa, Italy

    Online Study
    Linktree: UK Tea Academy Courses


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  • Ukraine’s Cold Weather Tea

    Virtually all the world’s tea is grown between the latitudes 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south of the equator. Rising temperatures in this narrow band threaten tea yields and force growers to consider planting “upslope” at higher elevations where cooler temperatures prevail. Unfortunately, subtropical tea cultivars perish in a hard frost, expected above 7,500 feet. The Zhornyna Experimental Tea Plantation in western Ukraine, is located near 50 degrees north latitude. Planter Maksym Malygin is successfully growing tea under forest cover that has survived heavy snow during prolonged winters at temperatures 26 below zero Celsius.

    • Caption: Maksym Malygin at his home near Kyiv
    Maksym Malygin owner of Zhornyna Experimental Tea Plantation
    Preparing for winter at Zhornyna in Western Ukraine near Mukachevo close to the border with Poland and Slovakia

    Cold-resistant Cultivars are Key to Expanding Tea Lands

    By Dan Bolton

    The Zhornyna Experimental Tea Plantation is in western Ukraine near Mukachevo, a city of 85,000 located near the borders that Ukraine shares with Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. Known as the Transcarpathia, this hilly region south of the Carpathian Mountains in ancient times was a part of Kyivan Rus. It was ruled by the Hungarian Empire for 1100 years until World War I and was part of Czechoslovakia until 1945 when it was ceded to Ukraine. The plantation is situated on high ground known as Chervona Hova or the “Red” Mount.

    Dan Bolton: Thank you Maxim for joining our podcast. Your first recordings were interrupted by air raid sirens following intense missile attacks near Kyiv where you make your home. What has been the impact of the invasion on Ukraine’s only tea garden?

    Maksym Malygin: We planned to carry out classical formative pruning of tea bushes in three seasons, from 2021 to 2023. After the first two years of pruning, we planned to test the winter hardiness of the skeletal branches of the bushes and not cover for the winter. This was planned to be done on 300 bushes that grow on the cleared part of the plantation. Pruning last year showed excellent results, the vegetation of the bushes increased from 15 cm after pruning to 70-80 cm at the end of the season. This April, we planned to cut at a height of 20-25 cm.

    We will not do this and lose at least one year. Also, we will not be able to organize the collection of leaves to produce more tea.

    “The most ambitious project at the idea stage is the creation of a new two-hectare tea plantation in Ukraine, but right now it’s completely frozen on hold.

    – Maksym Malygin

    Dan: It is good to know that you and your family remain safe. I speak for a global tea community that wishes your work will continue without war.

    What is the future of Zhornyna as it produces only experimental tea in small batches?

    Maksym: We have organized through ways for the development of the Zhornyna project. The first one is gaining experience directly on 300 bushes of the plantation. It’s not possible to make industrial production there, but it’s possible to consistently produce some tea for large tea tastings. The second is the vegetative reproduction of the unique winter-resistant tea. The third is a cooperation with colleagues in Europe on the transfer of tea and growing technologies in harsh climates. The most ambitious project at the idea stage is creation of a new two-hectare tea plantation in Ukraine, but right now it’s completely frozen on hold.

    Climate change is forcing planters to move upslope
    Zhornyna is near Mukachevo (marked in red)

    Dan: Listeners in Europe and northern regions that are experimenting with plantings will be interested in your experiments with temperature resistant cultivars. Will you describe the experiment in greater detail?

    Maksym: Analyzing cold-weather characteristics and cultivars is an interesting question. And it’s not that easy to answer.

    The history of unique Ukrainian tea plantation began in 1949 when non-varietal Georgian and Krasnodar seeds were sown, as well as seeds of the varieties Georgian No. 2, Kangra and a Japanese-Indian hybrid. This is described in the scientific literature.

    We made a map of the entire plantation area with the help of the GPS. The total area is 1.4 hectares (about 3.5 acres). Most of the original farm has been destroyed. The surviving tea plants are located in five places. Each has different morphological features. Unfortunately, we still have not been able to find specialists in the post-Soviet years who could establish a tea variety according to the morphological characteristics of plants.

    In this case, we need to use DNA analysis, but for comparison, we need to have data from old Soviet cultivars. My personal opinion is that the 300 bushes in the restored area descend from the Georgian No. 2 variety.

    During the past 70 years, tea plants on the plantation have experienced snowy winters when the minimum temperature was minus 26 degrees [see map depicting Hardiness Zones, above]. Last winter, the minimum temperature was minus 15 degrees with virtually no snow.

    Until 1999 “Zhornyna” was the most northern tea plantation in Europe. After the Tschanara Tea Garden in Germany emerging (the owners are my friends and colleagues Wolfgang Bucher and Haeng ok Kim) “Zhornyna” lost that status, but remains the most frost-resistant culture of tea worldwide (surviving winters with temperatures down to -26 C).

    Given the age and adaptation to the local climate, this tea is likely a Ukrainian frost-resistant subpopulation of Georgian tea. It is my opinion.

    Related

    Seventy-five Years of Experimentation

    In 1949 a team from the All-Union research Institute of Tea and Subtropical Agriculture in Georgia, after surveying much of Transcarpathia south of Kyiv, decided that conditions in western Ukraine on Chervona (Red) Hora Mount near the town of Mukachevo were ideal for planting cold-resistant tea.

    Dr. I. I. Chkhaidze supervised development of the experimental tea garden which was one of six in the region. The initiatives were part of a greater project of the National Academy of Sciences of the USSR that in 1950 funded attempts to acclimatize tea on territories including Moldova, Transcarpathia, Crimea, Primorsky Krai, and in the far west the islands of South Sakhalin and Kunashir.

    At Zhornyna non-varietal Georgian and Krasnodar seeds were sown, as well as seeds of the Georgian No. 2 variety; along with a Kangra cultivar from India and a Japanese-Indian hybrid.

    Photos of the plantation taken during the early 50s were lost. “All we can show is one photo from the archive in Russia and three photos from a book written by Dr. Chkhaidze, who led the team of scientists,” writes Zhornyna tea garden owner Maksym Malygin.

    The main goal of the project was “…full satisfaction of Soviet people’s needs for domestic tea.” In Georgia the Soviet Union implemented a similar project during the period 1930-1940 that ultimately supplied 30% of tea consumed in the USSR.

    Tea was first planted along the Black Sea coastline in 1885 near Batumi. In 1915 there were 170 Georgian tea plantations covering an area of 1,000 ha. By 1932 the state had established 19 state-run tea plantations and nine factories. The area under tea increased to 25,500 ha. By 1993 Georgia growers farming 56,000 ha annually produced 75 million kg of tea at 70 state run factories.

    Scientists considered the Transcarpathia to be the second most favorable region next to Georgia for producing tea, said Malygin. Fifty hectares on the collective were developed and 1.5 metric tons of high quality “Chervona Hora” tea was harvested in 1952

    The project was canceled in 1953.

    After canceling financial support for research, the plantation was abandoned. Lots of tea bushes were dug and cut out, only their roots remained. Thanks to the efforts of plantation workers tea bushes still grow, but there is insufficient capacity  to develop the plantation, Malygin explains.

    Among the experimental areas established in the Transcarpathian region only Red Mount’s persisted. Fifty years after the original 50 acres (20 hectares) were planted, only two hectares thrived. In 2000 there were several hundred tea plants still growing, blossoming and fructifying, he said. The bushes stood 1.5 meters high, said Malygin.

    Tea bushes over generations grew resistant to constant freezes and give new branches in the spring. Skeletal branches do not have time to grow on their own, he explains.

    Before 1999 Zhornyna was the most northern tea plantation in Europe. Plantations established in Germany and Great Britain are now the farthest north but Zhornyna is the site of the most frost-resistant tea cultivars worldwide, he said.

    A green arrow marks the Zhornyna Tea Plantation near Ukraine’s borders with Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia.

    “In December 2013, my wife and I visited the plantation for the first time and fell in love with this place. So was started the Zhornyna tea plantation conservation project that we call “Tea Grows in Ukraine.”

    The first step was to develop technology for the production of terroir and demonstrate that the leaves could produce quality tea. Experimental developments of semi- and full-fermented teas, were done from 2015 to 2021. The results demonstrated the great potential of the Transcarpathian teas, according to experts’ opinions.

    The second stage came in 2019, when part of the plantation was cleared. Our attention was then focused on the 300 small bushes. Shelters were built and the tea plants survived the cold winters.

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