Mild weather brews up a record tea crop

Nov. 22, 2011 - PRLog -- This year's balmy weather has brewed up a record vintage year – for British tea.
Workers at the nation's only tea plantation are picking leaves later in the year than ever before. Perfect conditions also means the leaves are bigger and better than previously recorded, leading to the biggest yield in history.
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Jonathan Jones, gardening director at the Tregothnan Estate, near Truro, is still picking Cornish tea nearly two months after the end of the normal season
The warmest spring for 100 years, followed by a wet summer and one of the mildest autumns on record means leaves are being picked well into November. Growers have seen a 30 per cent increase in the average crop, and expect a "vintage year" as healthy leaves are picked up to two months later than normal.
The tea-picking season normally lasts from April to late September, but experts expect to continue picking until December due to the warm weather.
Jonathan Jones, of Tregothnan Estate, near Truro, said he expected to harvest more than ten tonnes this year, compared to the previous annual record of seven.
He said: "It's been an incredible year for us and I'm absolutely amazed we're still producing. We're heading for a record year for sure.
"It's almost become an annual growing season. It started very early in April due to early warm weather in spring and we've just seen the perfect storm of conditions since. Summer was warm and wet – which mirrors the Indian climate where tea is traditionally grown – and we've seen an incredibly warm autumn.
"It's unheard of for us to be picking leaves in November, and the way things are heading we could find ourselves picking them for a few weeks yet."
Tea requires an ideal combination of sunlight, rain, warmth and soil pH (acid or alkaline level) conditions, which this year's weather has conspired to create.
The estate has only been a working tea plantation for the last decade and blends traditional imported teas with its own leaves to produce a quintessential English tea.
Tregothnan was the first place to grow Camellia, the plant used for growing tea, 200 years ago and tea bushes thrive due to the warm Cornish micro-climate. Their plants take six years to mature, but the
tea  t is ready for drinking 36 hours after the leaves are hand-picked.

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