A small island nation, Sri Lanka is located off the southeastern coast of India. A former British colony, Sri Lanka was called Ceylon before it became a republic and took on a new name in 1972. For almost one hundred years before that, Sri Lanka produced the commodity it’s best known for today — a robust black tea that’s still globally referred to as Ceylon.
Were it not for a botanical disaster in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Sri Lanka might be better known for coffee than tea. In 1869, a fungus wiped out most of the island’s coffee crop, and planters began making the move to growing tea.
Tea had been grown on a small scale in Ceylon for more than a century, but on an experimental basis only. In 1867, planter James Taylor planted a small amount of tea at the Loolecondera Estate. By 1873, a slim 23 pounds were produced. In less than a decade, production jumped to more than 81 tons, and a decade after that to 22,900 tons. Nowadays, Sri Lanka is one of the world’s foremost tea-producing regions.
Tea is grown in Sri Lanka at elevations ranging from 3,000 to 8,000 feet. Green, oolong, and white teas are produced in small quantities, but black tea remains the primary variety grown. At one time, Sri Lankan tea was referred to as Cingalese tea, but the Ceylon name hangs on today in spite of the historical efforts of some to change it.
Among the noteworthy tea-related attractions in Sri Lanka are an official tea museum and merchant, alongside Dilmah’s stunning Ceylon Tea Trails resort, which includes four classic colonial bungalows built for British tea estate managers in the days of the Raj.
To plan a historical itinerary, you can explore the virtual exhibits at the Ceylon Tea Museum to view vintage machinery and early processing artifacts.
For an interesting look at the early days of Sri Lanka’s tea industry, try Henry William Cave’s 1900 book, Golden Tips: A Description of Ceylon and Its Great Tea Industry available on Google Books.
If you are conducting deeper research into the historical archives, estates, and pioneers of this region, you can browse through the comprehensive records kept by the History of Ceylon Tea online database.
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