Making tea for Malawi
As we approach Malawi's Independence Day on 6 July, Adeline Teoh reflects on the history of the African tea trade.
Think 'African tea' and one of two images are likely to come to mind. The first is the red needle-like leaves of rooibos, or 'red bush', a South African native infusion – no relative of our beloved Camellia sinensis; the other is of the large commercial plantations yielding quantity over quality for tea multinationals.
Tea is not native to the African continent but was brought over in the mid-1850s and planted at the botanical gardens in Durban, South Africa. In the late 1800s, Scottish missionaries at Blantyre in Malawi attempted to establish orchards and other commercially valuable plantations, including tea and coffee.
Two things happened that crystallised tea agriculture in Africa: the British colonised Malawi in 1891 and the coffee plantations in Sri Lanka began failing due to disease. It was the failure of his coffee in Sri Lanka that brought Henry Brown to Malawi and it was Brown who turned seeds from the Blantyre tea plants into successful tea gardens, establishing the first commercial tea production on the African continent.
Today it's Kenya that produces the lion's share of tea for the continent, accounting for about 25% of the world's tea exports; Malawi accounts for just 1.7%, according to the UK Tea & Infusions Association. Much of this – from both nations – is produced at scale to be blended by the multinationals that own them.
In recent years, however, UK tea consultant Nigel Melican began working with Malawi's Satemwa Estate to develop specialty tea, focusing on its unique agricultural history and terroir. Founded in 1923 by Scotsman Maclean Kay, Satemwa is the oldest continuing tea estate in the country. While the first tea seeds Kay planted were Chinese varietals, in 1928 he imported Camellia sinensis assamica seed from India, which coped better with the climate and enabled him to expand for many decades. The estate is still family-run.
Melican's expertise helped Kay's descendants realise that the assamica bushes often used to produce bold CTC teas "could turn out delicate white teas with soft, floral rose scents, and mild, non-astringent green teas with notes of sweet and fruity apricot," describes The Tea Detective.
As for Malawi? It secured independence from Britain in 1964. Perhaps they raised a cuppa to that.
