Financial Times

Exotic white tea from a southern estate
By Joan Matheson
A white elephant at Yala, a white mahout at Pinnawela - what next, I thought to myself while going through the Sri Lankan newspaper during my current visit to this lovely island. I didn't have to wait for too long for the answer. "White tea" it was - at Galle.

Most, if not all, the people I met in Colombo were, not surprisingly, surprised to know that at the foothills of the Sinharaja rain-forest at a tea estate by the name of Handunugoda, a new variety of exotic tea was being introduced to the world market under the brand-name, ' Kilburn Imperial '.

The tea is named after an Englishman David Kilburn, a tea historian who now lives in Seoul with his Korean wife, Jade and is Chairman of the Tea Museum in that city. Kilburn had re-introduced the ancient Chinese tradition of manufacturing 'white tea'.

The tea bud is plucked by ladies in white gloves, cut with a golden scissor, goes through a special manufacturing process touching the human anatomy for the first time only when the liquid touches one's lips, we were told.

The marked difference between this white tea, and the black tea that is drunk in Sri Lanka and in the West, is that while 100 percent fermentation of the plucked teas goes into the manufacture of black tea, white tea is processed simply by withering the tea leaves shortly after plucking.

There is no fermentation of the leaves.
"In ancient times, about the time of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) ", a Kilburn Imperial press release states, " as the Chinese Imperial Court's appetite for exquisite teas blossomed, so it became increasingly common for tea growers to send the Emperor some of their finest teas as a tribute. Thus white tea became the tea of the Emperor ".

No longer so maybe, but still quite exclusive and pricey, nevertheless.
The white tea produced in Sri Lanka will cost US $25 (Rs.240) per 20 grams.
The setting was perfect last Monday morning for the naming ceremony. It was not too hot due to overcast skies. It didn't rain either to dampen the proceedings.

A pleasant breeze swept across from the surrounding southern hills as we sat under the specially installed marquee on the manicured lawns of the proprietor of Handunugoda Estate, Herman Gunaratne.

It could have been any English summer afternoon, at a village cricket match.
Herman is the quintessential Sri Lankan planter. I have met the likes of him during my earlier stint in this country, several years ago, but I should imagine that he belongs to a vanishing tribe.

Glass of gin-tonic in hand, the trade mark of the British planter of yore, Herman, a man of years of experience in the trade, describes his new project with the passion of a true pro in the field. He thinks, and quite rightly so, that Sri Lanka is lagging behind in innovative ideas for its most famous export.
He says, and again, quite rightly, that tea is becoming a worldwide phenomena as a health drink.

And didn't I get a stern lecture from one of the country's best tea makers - Ralston Tissera, a brother of the former All Ceylon cricket captain, Michael for having made the most sacrileges statement that anyone can ever make in the company I was keeping - that my wake-up drink was a cuppa coffee.

Herman went on to say that any promotion of Sri Lanka tea abroad was happening only " naturally " without any real support either from the industry, or the government." And, he lamented, the country's famous ' Ceylon Tea ' symbol, and the goodwill of more than a century attached thereto, were slowly, but surely being erased by multi-national brand names.

Very soon, the crown ' Ceylon Tea ', a household name with my parents and grand parents generations, will be gone forever, he predicted. Not even the titular crown it is today. Simply nothing to talk about in the near future.

It was nice to meet some of the Sri Lankan tea planters of yesteryear, the men who took over the management of the vast plantations in the central highlands and even in the south from the British Raj.

They acquired the better aspects of the mostly Scottish pioneering planters in terms of management, but the hearts of these sons of the soil are very much in the right place. The white tea project will probably not bring in huge foreign exchange to the country, because so very little is actually produced.

Annual production will be about 36 kgs only. But it was nice to know, and even better to meet with, people like Herman and Ralston, with a feel for their profession, marching on against the odds, with no patronage from where there ought to be some help, doing what they can, in their own simple ways, to uplift a flagging, but once great, but still very important industry in Sri Lanka.

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