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Sri Lankan Tea Culture
Sri Lanka is often the world's largest exporter of tea, and is the world's third largest producer of tea. Coffee, not tea, was Sri Lanka's main crop until 1869, when its coffee crop was destroyed by disease. Tea plantations began taking off in Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon) in the 1870's, and soon tea became the lifeblood of the Ceylonese economy, as it is today. Sir Thomas Lipton did much to jumpstart Ceylonese tea exports in the late 1800's, by creating a very large market for Ceylon teas in England starting in 1891. Sir Lipton's marketing efforts can still be seen on boxes of Lipton tea today. It was he who coined "brisk" and "Orange Pekoe" to describe the taste and bright, reddish brown color characteristic of all Ceylon teas.
Tea from Sri Lanka is referred to as "Ceylon" tea. Ceylons are classified as High-Grown (above 4,000 ft), Medium-Grown (2,000-4,000 ft), and Low-Grown (lower than 2000 ft). Much of the Ceylon tea that reaches America is mass produced using Crush Tear Curl (CTC) methods and destined for inexpensive boxes of tea bags, but most Ceylon tea is of an extremely high quality, and ends up in expensive specialty tea blends on German and Japanese shelves.
Ceylon teas have certain characteristics in common as well. First, Ceylon teas are black teas. Second, Ceylon teas produce brightly colored cups of tea. Third, only a very small amount of Ceylon teas are considered self-drinkers, although much Ceylon tea is highly prized for the flavor and color that it adds to tea blends.
The most famous specialty Ceylon tea is Dimbulla tea. It is an excellent tea and has less of a bite than Darjeeling tea, India's most famous specialty tea. The less well-known Nuwara Eliya tea is grown above 6,000 ft, directly above the Dimbulla gardens. It is considered to be one of the best black teas in the world, and is also expensive to manufacture and in limited supplies due the small, mountainous area in which it is grown.
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