Susie Walker-Munro of Walker-Munro Farms planted a small crop of tea in 2007 in a move to diversify their Angus farm and in 2015, her 100% pure Scottish black tea was launched in Edinburgh.
Having proved the concept, in 2016, nine pioneering tea growers from across Angus, Fife, Kincardineshire and Perthshire came together to share knowledge, glasshouses and machinery to create a group of called Tea Gardens of Scotland.
Scotland’s acidic soils suit tea plants and the climate stresses the plants resulting in the processed leaf having a deep complexity of flavour.
The quantities produced are small and rare, with todays retail pricing between £2000 and £2500 per kilogram.
Susie’s inspiration came from the first tea plantation in the UK at Tregnothnan in Cornwall, which she read about while reading a magazine in a dentist’s waiting room.
Photos showed the same familiar flora present on their own farm and their free-draining loamy soils and south facing slopes suggested that growing tea could be viable.
It was only once the first plants had been purchased that Susie realised the subject of tea is huge.
To grow tea in Scotland the plants must be hardy and must be protected during the establishment stage.
Susie took on the consultancy support of Beverly-Clair Wainwright who helped get a handmade black tea to market.
Launched by Pekoe Tea in Edinburgh, the product proved the concept that tea could be made in Scotland, but this tea was grown from shallow rooted cuttings, when tea grown from seed was required for growth outside in a farm field.
Seed-grown tea has a long tap root that mines down for minerals, anchors the plant in high winds and allows the plant to come back after severe frost.
Through Nothing but Tea, specially selected cold tolerant seed was imported from Ex-Soviet Georgia and Nepal.
The newly formed group Tea Gardens of Scotland leased glasshouses to germinate their tea seed and were successful in a LEADER application enabling them to continue to have consultancy support for the hardening off of the glasshouse plants and transfer to the nine tea gardens.
The process is slow, expensive and labour-intensive to start up and with Scotland’s shorter growing season it can take four to five years to achieve a mature bush that can withstand plucking.
However, if allowed to mature properly the yield can span 80 years with the plants living for 160, offering rewards over several generations.
To mitigate low yields, the group combined their leaf and this enabled the group to get their Nine Ladies Dancing tea to market in London at Fortnum and Masons.
Those behind Tea Gardens of Scotland are pioneers and with the help of the Community Food Fund, the team undertook a feasibility study which weighed up the potential of growing tea in Scotland which is available free of charge from their website.
With the support of Angus Rural LEADER programme, the group were also able to research different ways to optimise the growing conditions for tea in Scotland.
This included trialling different mesh nets and irrigation systems installed by local firms. Each of the tea gardens required additional help with weeding and plant care which was provided locally.
The group was very keen to establish an accreditation system with accepted standards set, to ensure any tea marketed as Scottish is genuinely 100% home grown protecting its authenticity and provenance which demands its price tag.
The organisation says there is an opportunity here for Scottish grown tea as consumers become more willing to pay a premium for food ethically produced, locally sourced, sustainable, distinctive and high quality and it is important the labours of these artisan pioneering growers are not undermined by food fraud which has scarred and damaged other fine Scottish produce.
To this end, the tea growers and Beverly Wainwright at the Scottish Tea Factory, have worked with The School of Biological Science at Aberdeen University to identify a distinctive chemical fingerprint which can establish certainty and therefore confidence in their product based on identifying the elemental profile of the soil the plants were grown in.
This game-changing Scottish technology can protect the value of Scottish produce and ensure that the investment being made is secure for the future.