Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

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Tea Picking Scottish Style 2014

Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

Tea picking Scottish style 2014. / Photo by Jane Pettigrew

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Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

The young plants post-harvest inside the tubes that restrict photosynthesis / Photo by Jane Pettigrew

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Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

Typical low misty cloud at Dalreoch. / Photo by Jane Pettigrew

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Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

Clearing the land in 2011 ready for planting. Dalreoch Hill is in the background. The Gaelic word Daleoch means “Field of the King.” a reference to Robert the Bruce. / Photo by Jane Pettigrew

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Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

The farm in late summer 2014 with some plants growing inside a plastic cloche tunnel and others in the open. / Photo by Jane Pettigrew

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Scotland's Wee Tea Farm

The plot before cultivation began in 2011. / Photo by Jane Pettigrew

The news that tea is being grown commercially in Scotland tends to provoke disbelief and open-mouthed amazement. But the Wee Tea Farm in Perth & Kinross in central Scotland has 4,000 tea bushes in the ground and, despite the short time since they were established here in 2012, and in contrast with the six or seven years that cold-climate tea farmers would normally wait before harvesting, the tea is already being plucked and processed. And that is due to a revolutionary method of cultivation being implemented by Tam O’Braan, managing director of the project.

The inauguration of the Wee Tea Farm

In 2011, O’Braan (an agricultural chemist who originally worked to produce degradable polymers for agricultural use, and rigid plastic tree guards for rainforest countries), had bought a piece of land in the tiny village of Amulree in the county of Perth & Kinross, as a laboratory plot, and had embarked on a program of cold weather research. Part of the project was to research the possibility of increasing the level of antioxidants in tea plants. That work is progressing and articles about it will appear in 2015 in The Lancet, the world’s leading general medical journal.

In 2012, O’Braan joined with Jamie Russell and Derek Walker owners of The Wee Tea Company in Fife, which was originally set up to blend and retail high quality teas. They decided to grow tea with O’Braan at the Dalreoch farm and add the Scottish- grown white, green and black teas to their range of specialist products. The farm is located on a steep hillside where water from a natural spring rolls down over the grassy slopes to bring a constant supply of water to the tea. Despite the region’s harsh winters, the three felt confident that, with the clean air in this remote spot, its misty cool climate, and the use of cutting edge agricultural technology, Scottish tea growing had a good future here.

To start the tea growing  program, tea plants were specially propagated for O’Braan in Italy and once established at the farm in Scotland, cuttings were taken from those original plants to create enough stock for the Dalreoch farm.

The new bushes went into the ground in 2012, struggled through deep snow during the worst winter in the past 100 years, survived and began to grow well in early 2013. Once into the open ground, O’Braan’s unusual cultivation techniques, developed in the Brazilian Amazon, Australia, and Holland, come into play.

A revolutionary technique

He starts by covering the ground in which the tea seedlings are growing with a degradable polymer, and this keeps the soil warm and prevents loss of moisture. As O’Braan explains, “By using degradable polymers around the plant, we reflect the sun’s own goodness upwards, doubling the effect of Scottish sunshine but also reducing the shade that insects prefer. We don’t use petrochemical-based pesticide and this means that airborne insects are discouraged from laying eggs on our crops. The degradable membrane traps the heat already within our soil and heightens humidity while reducing the need for any secondary watering.” The polymer covering allows the plants’ roots to develop more quickly and to strengthen, and that encourages better growth and the production of healthier, larger leaves above ground. The membrane also traps nutrients, which would otherwise be evaporated, and feeds them back into the soil. The polymer, which is programmable to pre-determine how long it takes to degrade, eventually collapses into the soil along

with the nutrients.”

When the plants have become more sturdy and mature, “we strip off up to 80% of the green leaves on the lower branches, leaving enough to keep the plants alive, and then we surround each plant with a narrow tube made of specific UV-reflective plastic. That cuts down the amount of light reaching the plant and encourages more growth at the top, so the plants produce a greater number of pale, delicate new shoots which we can harvest and process as higher quality teas.” Six months of restricted light is enough for the plants, which will not produce good flavor and quality if access to light is limited for too long, and so in August the light-inhibiting shields are removed, the plants are moved into a plastic cloche tunnel where they continue to develop and grow normally, protected from strong autumn winds and cold temperatures. In February, at the start of the growing season, the plants are again stripped of the lower leaves and the plastic tubes are replaced. As the plants grow higher, the light-inhibiting tubes also have to become taller.

The plan is to gradually expand the farm so that there are eventually 14,000 plants in the ground, and in order to create plenty of new stock, and to have more for sale to other new local tea farmers, O’Braan says “hardwood cuttings from our tea trees are taken on a regular basis. Many would rightly say that the ideal time is just after leaf fall or just before bud-burst in spring.” The new plants are propagated indoors until strong enough to go out into the ground.

Making Scottish tea

Once the new leaves and shoots have been harvested, they are hand processed at the farm to become black, white, or green tea. The black is withered in a humidifier, cut or rolled by hand inside muslin cloths, and oxidized and dried inside a machine that looks like a large microwave but is actually an oven which can also be used for steaming. The green tea is de-enzymed and dried, Chinese style, in a hot dry pan. The white tea is dried very slowly inside dehydrating machines that sit in sunlight on the window ledge of the processing room. Some of the white tea is smoked over beech wood chippings in a little wooden smokehouse that sits in the corner of the tea garden. Whereas 2013 and 2014 have been about agronomy, the work now is to experiment with manufacturing techniques that will develop and maintain distinct flavor profiles for each of the teas. Meanwhile some of the tea is being blended with other imported teas to create Wee Tea Company special blends and flavored teas.

A new Tea Growers Association for Scotland

With the obvious success of tea cultivation at Dalreoch, O’Braan wanted to spread the word about the possibilities of tea growing in Scotland. “We knew that if we didn’t share what had been achieved we’d be limiting the capability this offers and did not want to be that selfish. It’s an industry, not just one farm.” So now he also fulfills a second role as founder and chairman of the Tea Growers Association, which, when first set up, attracted very little interest and a good deal of doubt. Initial members were O’Braan himself, a Research Project in Kent, and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) based in London. O’Braan realized that “Healthy skepticism was keeping others back from jumping in and maybe looking foolish In fact locally my name was changed to Typhoo Tam in conversations. Many were waiting for me to fail and walk away.”

However, since an interview with O’Braan in the Out of Doors program on BBC Radio Scotland in early 2014, enquiries have been rolling in, mainly from Scottish herb growers and market gardeners, and even from the Royal Estates. And highland schools have also joined in order to create learning forums for children from the farming community and to open young minds to new ideas. Lochgilphead Joint Campus (a secondary school next to Lock Fyne in Angus) has already planted tea in a quiet section of the school’s large grounds. The association is registered as a not-for-profit organization with the aim of providing planting stock, sharing problems and solutions, offering technical advice, and pooling purchasing power. And, says O’Braan, “Plans are even underway for tea tours starting in the spring of 2015 - much like the Scottish Whisky tours that are so popular, but with more emphasis on sobriety!”

A selling co-operative is also now in operation through the association and this allows members to sell teas that they do not eventually market as single estate teas through the association, and to sell lower standard teas for blending to the Wee Tea Company. Those taking part already are Scone Estate in Perth, Scot Herbs in Dundee, and Garrocher Market Garden in Stranraar. From unlikely beginnings, it seems that a new Scottish tea industry has taken root and is set to grow well!