Go on a tour of tea farms in Sri Lanka

As I walk up a tree-lined path with my host, Neerthanjana Senadheera, it’s some minutes before I realise we are in the tea field—there’s more shade cover than I have seen. I am at Amba tea estate in Uva Highlands, one of eight tea farms that make up the Ceylon Artisanal Tea Association. All share a few traits—organic farming, including the local community, and the pursuit of crafting tea.

Amba had an early start in this journey when its current owners—four friends who wanted to create a social enterprise —bought the estate in 2007. Amba was the first Tamil-owned tea estate in these parts. Over generations, family disputes led to it being fragmented and sold. Simon Bell and his friends chose to convert Amba to organic cultivation and also added coffee and other crops. A few years in, their teas were finding customers in the UK and the US. They added a guesthouse inviting guests to come and experience first hand. At the core of Amba is the desire to offer employment and revenue opportunities for the community, through their tea and tourism and more. At breakfast, I enjoy a spread of jams and chutneys all made by the women of the Six Stars Chutney Cooperative that Amba helped set up. Everything at Amba seems to be about how it can support the community and the positivity is palpable. It’s a model of how tea farms can be for the greater good.

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From Amba, I make my way to Kaley, 12km from the Sinharaja forest. Nine years ago, when Kaley’s founder Udena Wickremesooriya decided to buy a farm, he landed here. Tea was planted but had been left untended for too long. Wickremesooriya chose organic cultivation, not an easy transition to make as yields drop significantly during the process. At the core of organic farming is soil health—look after the soil and it will look after the plant is the idea. Nearly half of the 40-acre estate has been left uncultivated, for the land to heal. And that’s Kaley, a tea farm but also a retreat, to heal.

My last stop is Forest Hill on the way to Nuwara Eliya, the island’s famous tea region, to meet Buddika Dissanayake. He is the unofficial guardian of wild tea trees at the Warnagala estate near Adam’s Peak or Sri Pada. It’s an astonishing story of the discovery of an abandoned tea estate where tea bushes had—in 130 years or so —grown into thir full height. Having stumbled upon them on his hikes, Dissanayake, who had left his corporate job, (also in tea), leased the land and started handcrafting teas from these leaves. It’s an incredible experience to be in the forest and looking up at the tea trees and even more to taste this tea.

I was travelling for tea but have returned home with a lesson in how a tea farm can be small yet significant, compassionate and generous to people and the land, welcoming and hospitable to humans and nature. It does make the tea taste better.

TEA TAKES

To tour one or several of these artisan farms, write to Amba Tea Estate at info@ambaestate.com

Tea Nanny is a fortnightly series on the world of tea. Aravinda Anantharaman is a tea drinker, writer and editor. She posts @AravindaAnanth1.

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