A tea farm in Northern Ireland; unexpected wines

‘Although we’re not blessed with sun in Northern Ireland, we do get the right rainfall and we have good drainage’

The first cup of Northern Irish tea was drunk last October. Its leaves were plucked from young, 30cm-tall tea plants, Camellia sinensis, in an Antrim polytunnel on the very day it was dried and brewed, and it tasted, according to Oscar Woolley, like ‘a milky oolong tea’.

Woolley co-founded Suki Tea in Belfast 11 years ago with his business partner, Annie Irwin, sourcing and blending leaves from around the world, and they are about two years into a project that aims to nurture hardy Tanzanian camellia cuttings in their friends’ field in Portaferry. There’s still plenty of growth needed before their plants reach picking height, but each sip of that brew gave Woolley hope.

It has been some journey – three failed attempts to get 2,000 mature cuttings sent over from east Africa (one batch arrive mushy, ‘like tea wine’); warnings of terminal frost and camellia disease. But, Woolley explains, ‘although we’re not blessed with sun in Northern Ireland, we do get the right rainfall and we have good drainage’. He’s aiming for a black tea characteristic of Irish breakfast (light, brisk and hardy) but hopes to test it out, by processing the leaves differently, as a white and a green as well.

Suki’s current greens are pipped in popularity during January only by matcha, the green powder derived from shadegrown leaves. Woolley prefers his whisked with hot water and drunk neat, as they do in Japan.

In a few more years, he may be starting the day instead with a home-grown cup of a Portaferry pick-me-up.