Experts hoping to bag quality product

A group of Scottish tea planters are on a mission to find the perfect brew that can be grown on home soil

Scotland is renowned for its quality food and drink but, despite being a nation of tea drinkers, we’re not known for producing the product on home soil.

But this might be about to change – more than 40 tea producers can be found throughout Scotland and now a group of them are working with a research team from the Rural Innovation Support Service (RISS), led by the Soil Association, to find the most profitable and highest-quality tea that can be grown on Scottish soil.

Richard Ross, chairman of Tea Scotland (the Association of Scottish Tea Producers), is one of the tea growers on a mission to find the perfect blend right on our doorstep. He says that though tea producing may be associated with warmer climes, Scotland has very similar soil to these places and we, as a nation, have a long history with tea planting.

Richard said: “Like most people I didn’t realise it was possible to grow tea in Scotland at first – you tend to think of it being this tropical type of plant that wouldn’t thrive in our climate.

“Black tea and green tea are the two teas we’d really be looking to do. Herbal teas are a different proposition. Effectively we’re competing with the sort of teas that are now mostly grown in India, China and Kenya, which seems like an odd thing to try to emulate in windy and cold Scotland, but the conditions in these places are actually quite similar to what we can produce in Scotland.

“There’s clearly a market for Scottish-grown tea. Throughout history, there’s a really strong tradition of Scottish tea planters and we’ve always had expertise in growing and processing tea. My own grandfather was a tea planter in Sri Lanka and I grew up with these stories of Scots taking tea around the world. I like the idea of bringing tea home.

“It looks like there are as many as maybe 40 growers around Scotland. Our members come from a real geographic spread – from Dumfries to Orkney, from Fife to Arran – so we’re starting to understand between us what’s possible in different parts of Scotland.”

Supported by the RISS, which helps farmers and those involved in agricultural projects turn an idea into a reality, the group will be assisted by Dr David Marshall, of Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), who will help them understand the genetic diversity of the tea varieties they are growing – but he conceded that the pandemic has thrown timescales into question. He said: “There are two aspects in terms of what we’re hoping to do. One is that we are hoping to analyse what the tea growers here already have. We’ve been speaking to people who know a lot about tea internationally and we might be able to source material from them that’s maybe better adapted to the Scottish climate.

“We are also working with the horticultural department at SRUC about the prospect of using tea for student projects and for them to be able to look at tea propagation under Scottish conditions.

“Tea grows in a much wider range of places than people realise and there are some parts of the world, such as Nepal or Georgia, where tea is grown under conditions that are much cooler than you’d expect. Tea tends to be grown in relatively mountainous areas and the tea growers in Scotland have so far grown it under some quite extreme conditions – it’s been quite happy when winters have gone down to around -8C.”

Quality is the name of the game, said Richard, who highlights the fact the kind of tea the group is looking to grow won’t be as mass market as the Tetleys of the world and is more likely to be a premium product.

He said: “It’s always going to be a boutique, smallscale production as we’ll never be able to compete with the big names for two reasons: it’s the quality end of the market we’re aiming for because we’re looking to make more of a premium product, and in terms of scalability we just wouldn’t be able to achieve that volume. You’re never going to see half of Aberdeenshire turning into tea fields, for example.

“It’s always going to be a niche industry and, for that reason, it’s got to be at the quality end of the spectrum – a loose leaf, hand-made tea rather than the more industrial tea that you might get in your average tea bag.”

Throughout history, there’s a really strong tradition of Scottish tea planters and we’ve always had expertise in growing and processing tea