Highly Commended Award for Dartmoor Estate Tea at The Leafies
‘Affirmation and Celebration!
This month we were delighted to brush the soil from our knees and take a trip up to London to attend The Leafies 3rd International Tea Awards. From almost 400 tea entries we were thrilled to win a highly commended award for our Dartmoor Ancient Forest Steamed Green Tea. The judging panel were a team of highly respected and experienced tea professionals and we couldn’t have been more honoured to have our entry recognised by them. The event itself was a hive of excitement with members of the press, public and tea industry professionals all coming together to talk tea and taste some of the winning entries.
Highly commended award for Dartmoor Ancient Forest Steamed Green Tea
The feedback we received was astonishing, especially considering that when we began to grow our tea in 2015 it was purely to see if tea could grow in the UK, unprotected in the field using organic and regenerative farming practices. This was a particular challenge as we were not farmers and had no horticultural training. We did not know how to grow and look after tea bushes and we did not know how to make tea from what we grew. Our inexperience was such that we did not know what tea should really taste like and we certainly didn't know what our tea might taste like!
Regardless of this we pushed on, learning from our many mistakes and the wonderful support of friends and the tea community far and wide. We didn't realise at the time that there is something magic and deeply special about tea and it has been that which has driven our ambition to learn all we can and produce the finest quality tea that we can from our plants.
So just as we approach the 10th Anniversary of Dartmoor Estate Tea you can understand how happy, proud and humbled we were to receive such high praise from the judges and all those that came to taste our tea. Who knows what the next 10 years will bring us but with such affirmation we are determined to continue our efforts.’
Jo and Kathryn, Dartmoor Estate Tea
Jo and Kathryn
Meet the Producers
From its inception the European Speciality tea Association (then European Tea Society) recognised the importance of engaging with tea producers, both in Europe and around the world. For speciality this is where it all begins, marrying passion with best practices in both cultivation and then processing to ensure a fantastic sensory tea experience in the cup.
It may well surprise some that Europe is even mentioned in a piece about tea production, but there are between 70 and 80 tea gardens in Europe from at least 16 difference countries, from Denmark in the north to Spain in the south. All of them relatively small, many of them concentrating on speciality and a good number of them using organic techniques.
The European Speciality Tea Association has taken that recognition of the importance of tea growers by launching a new category of membership specifically for producers. Each producer member will be able to have access to a document written by the President, Nigel Melican, called Guidelines for small-scale tea production. These words are taken from the introduction to the guide: “There are very few Golden Rules to tea production; we can rarely say that under all conditions this or that is the Right Way or Wrong Way – but for every individual set of conditions, there is always the Best Way. These Tea Guidelines, based on 40 years of work in the industry spent seeking out the best ways, are written as an aide-memoire to the key tasks and actions, and some tips to help you choose the best way to avoid the many potential mistakes commonly made when starting the journey.”
As an association we really hope that we will be able to play our part in promoting speciality tea and improving quality right at the beginning of the tea journey.
Click on the images to meet the producers
