My new found respect for tea

I was never really a tea drinker whilst growing up. To me it was the drink adults consumed. My parents have always drunk a lot of tea - a cup with breakfast, at mid-morning, lunch time, mid-afternoon (perhaps two cups), tea time (known as dinner time to many), mid-evening and then perhaps a cup just prior to bed time. If I did have a cup, then it would be white with two sugars.

On reaching adulthood I didn’t suddenly feel the urge to drink copious amounts of tea as I had sometimes thought would happen. In fact, it wasn’t until university that I really started to drink hot beverages (coffee, tea & hot chocolate) more than once a month. Fast forward to the age of 24 and cups of tea started to appeal on chilly days and when meeting with clients (it got boring and frustrating always insisting that I really did want just tap water, not tea or coffee). I’m now 26 and today I consumed two cups of tea and I am considering a third. Am I going the way of my parents?

Not only am I now drinking more tea, but I am also drinking it black without sugar and enjoying it all the more so. I stopped with the milk because I’ve pretty much cut out dairy milk from my diet due to always developing hideous spots when I drink it. The lack of sugar is simply down to laziness and besides, after a period of drinking black with one sugar (cut down from two to help preserve the teeth), I really wasn’t noticing much difference.

But what is the point of this post you ask? Well, until recently we had been drinking Lipton tea. For whatever reason, on our last shop we opted for Dilmah. Recently Dilmah have been advertising on TV (see above video). I’ve not really paid much attention to the ads, but the friendly guy who guides us through the ad has stuck in my mind. Whilst fishing out a tea bag today I decided to read the box and also found an information leaflet at the bottom of it too. To summarise:

• 25 years ago or so, tea fell into the hands of big traders who bought up as many small to medium sized tea traders as they could to eliminate competition. The traders left behind eventually couldn’t compete and went out of business.
• The big traders create multi-origin blends of tea. Some of what you drink can be a mixture of tea from as many 30 or more different countries.
• Your typical brand name teas have succumbed to commercial demand and concentrated on developing quicker brewing tea, rather than quality.
• Dilmah is single origin, 100% pure Ceylon tea packed at source.
• Dilmah is the world’s first fully integrated family tea company.
• Dilmah do not use middlemen to market their tea to vendors, middlemen who typically make the highest amounts of money in the tea trading world.
• Earnings from Dilmah remain in Sri Lanka, shared with workers and the community. They reinvest in the industry to make tea sustainable.
• Dilmah claim the fair trade stamp on some brand name tea is largely a marketing strategy, pointing out that there can be no fair trade when middlemen are involved.

Is my new found respect for tea - Dilmah tea in particular - just born out of my love of a good story of small company of humble beginnings versus huge, money hungry multinationals? Probably. But then add to that the health benefits of tea, which reportedly include that it can protect against heart disease and some cancers, what is there to not love about it?

As it turns out, the guy in the advert that has stuck in my mind is the founder of Dilmah tea, Merrill J. Fernando (the name Dilmah comes from the names of his two sons, Dilhan and Malik in case you were wondering) and he seems to be a guy of very good principles. I think I might just continue drinking Dilmah tea out of respect for him alone.

A few links of interest

MJF Charitable Foundation - The charity set-up by the founder of Dilmah tea, whose main causes are humanitarian.

United Kingdom Tea Council - For everything you could ever want to know about tea.

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