Scottish tea brewing a sales success in China

(10 Apr 2016) LEAD IN: Scotland is well known for the quality of its whisky, but now its tea is gaining international acclaim. China is now buying nearly as much of the Scottish white tea as the boutique small-scale growers can produce. STORY-LINE: A tea plant basking under an intense sun, but this isn't China, India or Kenya... it's Scotland. From the summit of the Dalreoch mountain in Perthshire, at the heart Scotland, you can now spy a tea plantation in the glen. It might seem like an unlikely spot to grow tea but the naysayers cannot dispute the success. The tea grown here sells for around 2,000 UK pounds per kilogram and 80 percent of this year's harvest has been bought up by Asian clients, most especially China. Protected against the wind by plastic wrap after their recent harvest, Chris Henry from the Wee Tea Plantation is inspecting his plants. Growing tea in Scotland isn't the easiest job and Henry reckons the high winds are the biggest challenge. Here in the nursery Henry is caring for the young plants he has cared for since seedlings. The former demolition man now gets to create rather than destroy. He says: "You bring these on from nothing, from a seed and you watch them grow and develop through time, like you do with a child, they go from a baby right up . These are basically my kids because I have to look after them, make sure they're all right, make sure they're growing the way they should. So you can relate to that, bringing up kids, your trees are the same kind of idea if you like." But growing tea in the Highlands of Scotland isn't as hard as you might imagine. Darjeeling tea in India grows in the Himalaya mountains at altitudes of up to 2,000 metres, where the weather is also very cold. Scotland is much further north than Darjeeling but the altitude is also 1,700 metres (5,577 feet) lower and there is no shortage of fresh air and spring water straight from the mountain. The Wee Tea Plantation is the brainchild of Tam O'Braan who has been growing tea here on his estate since 2011. The Dalreoch plantation produced 500kg of tea last year, with between 800 to 1,100kg expected for 2016 in the rapidly growing project. But Dalreoch is not the only plantation in Scotland, currently nine other growers are producing tea around the country and by the end of the year another ten will have joined the newly founded Scottish Tea Growers Association. Today O'Braan is heading on the ferry to one of the most remote Scottish growers over in the Isle of Mull. The small, windswept island is an unlikely location for a tea plantation but already Martyn Gibson, along with his wife Liz, have produced a stem tea which sells for 35 UK pounds for a 15 gram bag. O'Braan is now selling 80 percent of the tea he grows to Asia, and in particular China where the demand for white tea is driving growth. He certainly sees the funny side in selling tea to China but insists it's no accident. "We are selling tea to China," he says. "We're not selling sand to Arabs or ice to the Eskimos but it was in part the business plan, it was intended. We are growing here a white tea. White tea consumption in Europe is the lowest of all of the types of tea, black or green. Green is the fastest growing, black is the largest proportion but we knew that the rising middle classes in China were looking for more white tea than the country grows." Despite the rapid growth and demand for his tea, O'Braan has no plans to leave the small-scale business model that he believes is essential to the taste of his tea. On the Isle of Mull the next project is to grow matcha tea – a type of refined, green, powdered tea originally from Japan. The tea is now protected from high-winds by these cane fences. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/aa80678f3bbf2c7277a3339d013c87e6 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork