Monday, July 07, 2008
Posted by Miss Neddy at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Categories: Tea

I readily admit that I simply do not know that much about tea, especially its history and where it is grown. I knew it is grown in China, Japan and Taiwan, of course, and Sri Lanka and India. Malaysia is famous for its Cameron Highland Boh tea, and Indonesia has grown tea since the days of Dutch colonialism.

But I had not known that parts of Africa grow tea too, actual camellia sinensis bushes, not just the Rooibos tea that is steadily growing in popularity internationally. Kenya, in fact, ranked third behind China and India in the 90s as a top producer of black tea leaves, while Cameroon is known for its high quality leaves. South America boasts at least four countries that produce tea, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru. I learned of Vietnamese tea plantations from a Vietnamese intern who brought back some tea leaves recently.

Other equally exotic (well, to me anyway) places which have tea plantations are the Mauritius, the Azores, Iran and Papua New Guinea. The common factor that ties all these lesser-known tea producing countries is that their output is almost exclusively black tea. Green tea still remains the provenance of the Far Eastern countries of China, Japan, and Taiwan, and wulong tea is produced only in the Fujian province of China and in Taiwan. Despite the increasing interest in green tea worldwide, due to its health benefits, black tea remains the most produced and most consumed tea in the world.

Main source: The Tea Companion: A Connoisseur’s Guide, by Jane Pettigrew. ISBN: 9780762421503

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