Ceylon

Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was the name of this island when it was an English colony. When England took over this island in 1803, the cultivation of coffee was dominant. Coffee had been introduced by the Mohammedan merchants. Around the year 1870 a fungal disease almost destroyed the entire coffee cultures. The growers had to look for new sources of income and found the china bork, which, in turn, was cultivated to such a large extent that the prices fell dramatically. Then, it was discovered that the Scot James Taylor had already been employing "diversification" and also experimented with tea plants, something which was until then unknown. He became the father of tea cultivation in Ceylon.

Hence, the island which was once famous for coffee became a tea-island, the tea export of which is now the second biggest after India and before China. 214,000 tons of tea are produced on almost 221,000 hectars of land. This represents more than 11 per cent of the world's tea production.

The main customers are the Gulf States, Pakistan, Egypt, Great Britain, Iraq and the USA. Among the many Ceylon teas the ones with intensive colour and strong taste are dominant. Apart from that, one has to distinguish between the different cultivation areas and the time of year when the harvest took place as Ceylon lies in a region where monsoon winds prevail and, depending on the time of year, the plucked tea differs in aroma. The tea cultivation areas lie on a height of between 300 to 2,500 metres. The most important cultivation areas are Uva in the East, Dimbula in the West and Nuwara Eliya in the central highland as opposed to the area around the city of Kandy where qualities diminish.