Tea brewed to perfection
View(s):Like to enjoy a nice cuppa of steaming hot tea brewed to perfection? Then await the ‘Tea Café’ to be launched next month by an industry veteran who is simultaneously organising what is seen as Sri Lanka’s first training course in ‘tea tasting’.
“When we were having a family discussion on the tea café concept, the idea of a course also emerged,” said Niraj de Mel, an industry expert with 36 years of experience in the tea business.
In a newspaper advertisement last week, Mel’s Tea Academy said it was launching a 12-weeks course to ‘learn the fine art of tea tasting and grading’ which would start in September/October at the academy at Cotta Road, Borella. While there have been in-house training by tea companies for tea tasters in a centuries’ old business, there has been no formal training course for tea tasting and grading of the country’s 26 different grades.
Chrisantha Perera, another veteran tea industry personality and former chairman of Forbes & Walker, described the effort as a ‘groundbreaking one’ adding that he has not heard of any such course before.
The training course will include field visits to an estate, the Tea Museum and the Tea Research Institute, and is targetting school leavers.
At the proposed Tea Café, Niraj’s team will serve a cup of tea to perfection – being brewed for 3-5 minutes. “We plan to serve all kinds of authentic tea flavoured with real ginger and spices, along with local short eats and kiribath,” he said.
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