Dan Graham claims it “feels like yesterday” when, all through the mid Nineteen Nineties, he was driving round espresso retailers within the south-east of England trying to flog the family agency’s tea luggage. “Weekly sales were about £50 and it’s a bit disheartening because I think I used to work harder then than I do now,” he jokes.
Thirty years on and Graham is at present taking good care of supervisor of the prices tea model identify Birchall Tea, a fifth generational firm which has truly rejected the associated fee battles within the trade all through the years and is at present contemplating a ₤ 10m flip over goal over the next 3 years.
It was Graham’s terrific, terrific, terrific grandpa, Captain Birchall Graham, that grew the very first tea shrubs in 1872. Injured all through the Crimean War, he had truly gone again to the UK in his very early 20s previous to being printed to India and getting some land in Darjeeling after observing tea’s monetary price.
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Birchall has no net hyperlinks to India at present– Captain Graham is hidden in Darjeeling– with its mass tea service based mostly in Mombasa, Kenya and the agency at present the globe’s greatest service provider of black tea out of East Africa.
“It’s not just tea from Kenya, it’s Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda,” claimsGraham “Those countries collectively produce more tea than any other region in the world. It’s shipped down to Mombasa, the centre of the tea trade, it can be blended, packed and shipped and we export to 30 different countries.”
Birchall’s in depth tea cups instance 5,000 numerous units every week, with round 40 ample to make it proper into blends. This contains its Great Rift merchandise, a mixture of Kenyan and Rwandan tea.
In 2004, Birchall Tea, which claims being the one tea model identify to have truly received 13 successive years on the Great Taste Awards, acquired a tea hacienda in Rwanda, with the federal authorities eager to privatise the market on the time. Birchall marketed a years afterward after altering the story for its tea pickers.
“We believe Rwanda produces the best tea in East Africa because it’s right on the equator,” claimsGraham “It’s a really excessive altitude, which is ideal for rising tea; you want a number of sunshine, however it additionally must be chilly and also you want a number of rainfall.
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“The African highlands have those three elements perfectly, while the volcanic soil that Rwanda has adds a sort of brightness and golden colour to the tea.”
This yr Birchall Tea, which sells about 50 million kilos of tea yearly, commissioned a YouGov survey which revealed that 87% of Britons didn’t know that Africa produces tea, whereas 55% of UK adults have been unaware that many tea luggage in the marketplace include tea mud and stalk, relatively than entire tea leaves.
