A tea estate in the foothills of Dartmoor will celebrate its tenth anniversary this year with an open day and a big tea party this summer.
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Dartmoor Estate Tea was set up on January 1 2015 by former nurses Jo Harper and Kathryn Bennett after Jo decided to make his dream of growing tea a reality and went online to buy 1000 seeds from China.
Undeterred by the fact that only 30 tea plants grew from his initial seed purchase and his lack of experience in cultivating tea, Jo and Kathryn pressed on learning everything they could about tea production and experimenting with their crops. They now produce a variety of black, green and even a yellow tea, including the award-winning Dartmoor Ancient Forest. The couple also host workshops and tours of their Ashburton estate.
‘Our biggest challenges have been discovering the best way to grow and care for the tea plants and learning the ancient skills required to produce our hand-picked and hand-crafted teas,’ said Jo.
‘We have had so many great memories and met so many wonderful people,’ he added. ‘We have had exciting times travelling across India, Africa and Nepal learning their own individual ways of tea making. Last year, we had visitors from all over the world come to the plantation including a team from Tokyo who bought a lot of our tea to take back to Japan. Our year ended on a high with us winning an international tea award, which the judges described as astonishing.’
Going forward, Jo said the couple are committed to ‘continuing to grow our tea organically using regenerative farming practices and to produce the finest tea we can’. As well as a big tea party for all the friends who have helped them over the last ten years, Jo is brewing ‘a couple of other exciting things’, which he is ‘keeping in the bag for the moment.’