| Page 2 of 2 < |
Just Their Cup of Tea: British Cultivate Their Own
So Boscawen and Jones thought it was high time to start growing it.
Having done globetrotting research on c amellia sinensis , the green bush that produces tea leaves, Jones said he learned that there are many myths about tea, including that it grows only in warm weather. In fact, what really matters, he said, is that there is no frost. He noted that the Cornwall estate has comparable temperatures to Darjeeling in the Himalayan foothills, which produces world-famous tea.
  Jonathan Jones surveys the crop he is growing in Cornwall with Evelyn Boscawen, a descendant of Earl Grey. Tea plants require a frost-free climate. (By Mary Jordan -- The Washington Post) |
Meteorologists have recorded gradually rising temperatures in England in recent decades. But Jones said thermometer readings aren't what kept England from growing tea. It was high costs.
In former British colonies such as India and Sri Lanka, the bushes grew so effortlessly and their leaves were plucked by laborers so cheaply that it has always been more profitable to grow tea abroad, then ship it back to be blended in English factories and packaged as English Breakfast or Earl Grey.
But more than once, the English have thought how nice it would be to stop relying on fields half a world away, Jones said, noting that Winston Churchill was deeply worried during World War II that rationing caused by disrupted tea supplies would hurt morale.
The new Tregothnan tea is exceedingly expensive. Loose blended tea runs about $10 an ounce, and a box of 25 bags costs $18. By comparison, Tetley's popular package of 80 tea bags sells for less than $3. But in an era when people pay $4 for a cup of coffee, the upscale specialty goods chain Fortnum & Mason has bought the novel crop and begun selling it in stores.
"It's a rare tea," remarked Jones, who said that he hopes to expand his current crop of 20,000 plants on 20 acres to 100 acres. Still, he said, he had no illusion it would ever be more than a niche market.
"People think of tea as being quintessentially British when in fact it is grown all over the world, so now it's quite exciting to have some grown at home," said Diana Williams, a spokeswoman for Tetley.
Twenty years ago, she said, people drank exclusively black tea with milk, but now there are many specialty green and herbal teas. "Tea is getting quite exciting," she said, noting that British people are even drinking iced tea, which until recently was seen here as a strange American habit.