The Party is in the Kitchen

We call it a lab as it sounds cerebral and alchemistic … our new wee tea kitchen in the byre.

I doubt it is either of those things, but we are proud nonetheless of our nice clean, orderly tea kitchen made by us on a shoestring. It is a rennovation of the end room in our byre and you can see before and after pics on our insta. I spent 2 days repairing those 2 windows and er… a while painting … as for Duncan I suppose he has pretty much done the rest. Nice one Dunc :)

It has already been used this year as a leaf experimentation space, a place to weigh and pack our crop for transportation to the factory, to brew and taste teas, to test recipes for ice teas…. and finally to throw a wee party in!

I hope you can visit soon for a tea tasting one day… I will gather the finest teas and we can enjoy them together… watch this space..

Islay

#5 The Gathering - Our 2021 Harvests featuring in a Rare Black Scottish Grown Tea

Tomorrow our first ever tea goes on sale !!

It is in any tin you buy of ‘The Gathering’ a collaboration of leaf from 8 growers - all member gardens of Tea Scotland. This is groundbreaking stuff for the tiny burgeoning industry that is tea in Scotland !

A venture to overcome complicated logistics and to work with the talent in Scotland to create an exciting new tea became a reality for 8 far flung tea gardens across Scotland. We now have collaborative product which has been exciting the taste buds of the group and various tea tasters over these last couple of weeks!

The tea features leaf harvested in 2021 and developed with care at The Scottish Tea Factory.

Members of Tea Scotland joined the tea making sessions with tea expert Beverly Wainwright and are over the moon with the new tea.

Read about the members and buy the tea !

#1 Upon this handful of soil

Glen Caladh Farm  - Tea Diaries

Upon this handful of soil, humanity depends, husband it and it will give you food, fuel and shelter and surround you with beauty.  Abuse it and the soil will collapse, taking humanity with it.

Sanskrit Veda 200BC

It’s 10:30pm on a June evening 2020, Loch Ruel wears the pattern of the hills like silk. We are planting tea seedlings, each one so carefully that breathing becomes conscious, coaxing out the long fragile tap roots from the soil. After 6 years searching for our place in nature and by the sea, looking out onto the water from the doors of the polytunnel is a tonic for the spirit and a dream come true.

We came to Glen Caladh Farm from Edinburgh in 2017 with the aim to grow a tea plantation, to have land that we could farm, enjoy and sustain.  The plan is to have a mutually beneficial arrangement with the land we take from as we think humanity would do better if this relationship were higher on the human agenda.

We have our first 2 acres of tea plantation and we are bringing on the next generation of tea in our polytunnel.  We mow the pasture and try to promote wildflower meadows, over absent in the UK.  We are experimenting with growing various plants that are happy with acid soil and abundant rainfall.

The forest management plan seems quite simple if we had the cash to implement it, as we could return it to Caledonian forest and let it look after itself. Our small vintage motor collection seems to grow with Duncan’s enthusiasm!  A love of machines meets a love of plants… an incongruous mix.  Duncan is as happy as can be and the machines seem indispensable at the moment for many tasks on a tea plantation. 

On moving here we installed a micro hydro pipeline and the farm now chugs along, powered by the ever running river at the North boundary.  We work building and growing and trying to start up a business to sustain it all. 

I am starting this blog to talk about tea and nature, and to tell our tiny story of a Scottish grown single estate tea, its journey from field to cup and some other things along the way.

#2 Africa the land of CTC and a Punch in the Face

A few years ago now, I was punched in the face by a tea plucker on a dirt road in ….well… a large tea growing region in East Africa. 

I had a video camera and apparently that’s all it took, they thought I was making money from their images, I was actually making a charity film with a charity; Malawi Music Fund  One moment I was filming a graceful woman walking calmly with her basket, and the next I was hit in the face whilst my camera was almost yanked away from me - I wrenched the camera to my chest and retreated quickly to the car, fast closing the window in a cowardly gesture against the rising clamour of shouts and the angry thumping of fists on the window. Staring blankly at the amused driver, feeling a bit shocked and confused, I resolved to find out about the plantation there. My film was nothing to do with tea nor farming, but I interviewed several farmers on that trip and some unhappy truths were revealed.

I won’t go into this deeply but was heart breaking to see the tea pluckers so angry and I really can’t say that if I were in those conditions I wouldn’t also feel like hitting a stranger.  So I appreciate having seen first hand the anger these tea pluckers must feel, isolated from family, exposed to the elements, the pesticides, physically exhausted, with bad sanitation, crowded living quarters, mostly hungry and frequently suffering back pain from the job. I feel like I witnessed an important human truth that day, I saw the woman tea pluckers anger and felt a heavy guilt, I am quite sure I deserved it, for all those years as a student when I forgot about loose teas tea and bought tea bags.

So much of the worlds tea bag tea is manufactured with so little respect to the people that grow and make it. I can never buy cheap teabag teas again.

Perhaps if people in the UK knew about how much work goes into growing and making tea we wouldn’t expect to pay so little for it?  Tea pluckers in Africa and other CTC tea bag producer countries are our concern, as we drink so much of it. I do think that unsatisfactory tea worker conditions in these countries are perpetuated partly due to the disconnect we have to the production of our nations favourite drink. 

At Glen Caladh Farm we are working on a single estate Scottish tea that celebrates the flavours naturally present in the leaf.   At the same time we will promote an understanding and a connection to the tea we drink. 

#3 From Teabag to Loose Tea – how hard can it be?

Loose Leaf Tea - some pointers

• Warm the pot

• Use fresh water every time

• Keep the leaves dry in between infusions so you can infuse the leaves again and again, and sometimes even again..

• Brew at the recommended temperature

• Brew for the recommended time

  If you do the above things you could be on the path to enlightenment ; ) Darjeeling at 90degrees is a different creature than straight off the boil, greens are often brewed much cooler and eating food with tea isn’t so weird when it isn’t so hot…

• If you use a tea strainer / filter basket do then get a large one with as much room as possible for the leaves to move around.

• If you put the tea leaves straight in the pot remember to heat the pot first and just heat the kettle to the recommended temperature (a temperature controlled kettle could change your life…)

• If you don’t use a temperature controlled kettle, then keep in mind boiled water will lose about 10degrees if poured into a cold container but don’t pour the boiling water on the leaves or you can burn them and deplete the aromas…

  Warm the pot, add the leaves, make the brew, anticipate and don’t rush - you’ll be rewarded

#4 The Various Flavours of Tea

A very few things that you thought you knew about tea… for beginners

It’s been 3 years since we planted our tea and the learning curve has been steep. I think some of the most valuable learning comes from drinking tea actually, but before I contradict myself further I will explain. This wee piece is just for starters , we can go into amazing things about the plant later.

There seems to be a eureka moment with tea for a lot of people, when they try a premium loose tea that is unfamiliar to them, perhaps a white tea for the first time, or an oolong, when the palate knows only in black english breakfast tea with milk it is a completely new experience for them, a different beverage altogether, so which one is the tea? Well, to try the various flavours of tea, you can sit in your living room and delve into some of the UKs most bountiful specialty tea larders online, I have recommended a few of these in the footnote. You can often order samples so that if you don’t love it, you haven’t spent a fortune.

Black, Green, Oolong, White, Puer and yellow teas are all made from the same plant, camelia sinensis. There are two main tea manufacturing methods for black tea; CTC and Orthodox. There are two main processing methods for green tea, steaming in Japan or pan firing in China. Usually more refined teas are produced using the orthodox method and the other for teabag teas. There are also probably a million other teas out there that don’t fit these guidelines, but this is a broad and simple start. You cannot compare these 6 tea groupings with any sense of accuracy as there is so much variety within the groupings you would get nowhere. You might love some black teas and hate others, the flavours are so different, you might find a green tea that goes perfectly with your grans seafood dish but another green tea might ruin it.

Taste is a delicate thing, sometimes it is the flavour, or the aroma on the nose, sometimes its the texture on the tongue or around the mouth, that mineral coating, or that sweetness on the sides of the tongue. Sometimes it’s simply the taste of brioche and cashews and the lingering taste of caramel as in a good Keemun.

I urge you to try a tea you have not tried before. Here are a few that blew mine or Duncans minds…

Wuyi Rock - Oolong - Fujian Province - mineral, umami, no astringency

Ali Shan - Light Roasted Oolong, nutty, dried fruits,

Rohini Black Darjeeling - Jethi Kupi

Jun Chiabari -