Putting the tea in serendipity
On 4th February 1948, Sri Lanka became independent from British rule. Adeline Teoh traces the island nation’s fortunes from happy accident to tea tycoon.
Before it was Sri Lanka – ‘resplendent island’ in Sanskrit – the country was called Ceylon, a name today heavily associated with its tea. ‘Ceylon’ is the Anglicised version of the Greek, Sielen Diva, derived from the Persian, Serendip, the root for the word ‘serendipity’ or happy accident. It was by happy accident, in fact, that tea became an important crop to Sri Lanka.
Buoyed by the success of tea estates in India, the colonising Brits saw the perfect growing environment in Sri Lanka. Tea seeds were first brought from Assam in 1839 and planted at the botanical gardens in central Sri Lanka. Initial attempts at starting a tea industry, by Austrians using Chinese plants on their private estate, failed however. At the time, coffee was doing very well, and the plan for tea was not financially viable.
But then, in the late 1860s, a fungus began to infect the coffee plantations just as Scottish horticulturalist James Taylor began to establish tea bushes in Kandy, proving tea was a viable crop. Seizing the opportunity, fellow Scotsman Sir Thomas Lipton bought up five affected coffee plantations and established tea estates in their stead.
Lipton had made his name as a successful grocer and by 1890 he was distributing Ceylon tea across Europe and the US under the Lipton brand with its selling proposition being ‘Direct from the Tea Gardens to the Teapot’ to emphasise freshness and value, for he had cut out the expense of the middleman.
Today, the plantation around Lipton’s Seat where the entrepreneur first began his tea branding journey, is back in Sri Lankan hands as the Dambatenne Tea Estate and Factory. Meanwhile, in the 150 years since, the Ceylon tea industry has become the fourth largest in the world by volume and comprises 11% of Sri Lanka's total exports. And all this because of a timely blight on coffee plants.
Image below: View of Devathura Ella Falls on Oak Ray Tea Estate in Ramboda, Sri Lanka (Photo: Adeline Teoh)
