Before arriving in Las Vegas yesterday ready for World Tea Expo New Business Boot Camp (which has just started as I write), I was really lucky to have the opportunity to spend some time on Hawaii’s Big Island to meet the new tea farmers there and learn more about what they are doing.  My visit was organised by Eva Lee who grows tea, is on the Board of the island’s Tea Society and is also the Chair of Propagation.   I met Eva at World Tea Expo last year and I’m so pleased to have had the chance to find out all about this exciting venture.  We had a great time together and I am totally in awe of how much she and the other new growers have achieved - here we are tasting teas at the Mealani Research Station.

Eva is a choreographer and dancer and her husband Chiu is a potter and photographer and, like other artists who live close to the Kilauea volcano, they are influenced and inspired by the creative energy that is felt so powerfully in this area of the island.  With a few other dedicated growers and researchers, they are true tea pioneers and are encouraging, teaching, sharing and supporting the new community of Big Island tea farmers.  Despite the surprisingly wide variety of micro-climates (from rain forest to desert and everything in between), altitudes, soil types and depths, the tea plants seems to love the environment here and are growing really well.      

The cultivation of tea in Hawaii started about 15 years ago with plants being brought in from Taiwan by Francis Zee, who works for the US Development Agricultural Research Service.  When he suggested that tea might grow well in Hawaii, a few people were willing to have a go at cultivating the bushes and to start experimenting with the manufacture of greens, oolongs and black teas.  They (and now others too) are processing the leaf from different cultivars to make different categories and as I went around the island tasting and chatting to the growers, it was fascinating to learn about their experiments, their techniques, their successes and disappointments, and about the first pieces of machinery now being built or brought in from Japan, China and Taiwan.

Francis Zee no longer works on the tea project but his early investigations into the possibility of tea growing have led to a full scale research programme and the members of the team (Ching Yuan Hu, Associate Dean and Associate Director of Research at the University of Hawaii at Manoa - above left in green shirt, Milton Yamasaki, Field Manager of Mealani Research Station Manager - above right in red shirt, Stuart Nakamoto, Professor and Extension Economist, and Randy Hamusaki, Researcher) are based at various facilities that are part of the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources (CTAHR).

But a lot of valuable information and experience also comes from the people who have been growing for several years and really know what they’re doing in terms of irrigation, feeding the soil, choosing the cultivars that suit what they’re manufacturing.  John Cross, Manager for one of biggest farming landowners on the Big Island, was once in charge of trying to find a crop to replace sugar cane when the Hawaii sugar industry folded in the 1980s.  His garden (on the slopes of the now-dormant Mauna Kea Volcano is located at 900 feet above sea level and has the rich turquoise blue of the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop - see the photo at the top of the page) is filled with plants that he ran trials with – lychees, mangoustines, asparagus, kava and of course tea. 

Today he doesn’t have time to harvest the leaf from the one acre plot so Eva and Chiu drive over on a regular basis to pick the leaf and take it home for processing.  The varietals that grow on John’s farm are mainly Cambodian and Assamica so are best suited to the manufacture of black teas.  The finished tea made by Eva and Chiu from John’s harvest is neatly twisted, large leaves that give a sweetness and nuttiness that is delicious – an all day drinker that doesn’t need milk or sugar.

Mike Riley, a carpenter who makes wonderful furniture from locally grown Koa wood, has an extensive tea plantation over the road from his workshop and makes very impressive oolongs from various varietals.  The bushes here are growing at 3600 feet (above left) and the teas have a wonderful fresh character with hints of fruits such as papaya and apple, are sweet and suggest hints of fresh mown hay – they’re actually very similar in character to the best of Taiwan’s oolongs

Eva and Chiu, whose teas grow under shade in the forest around their home at 4000 feet (above left and right), make some amazing white teas that have the floral character of summer roses layered with subtle citrus hints of tangerines and comforting smooth suggestions of warm toast – fascinating and excellent; they also make a black and an oolong that are now selling at Samovar in San Francisco.  Eva is bringing a small delegation and a selection of Hawaii grown teas to World Tea Expo and is bound to find new customers, so who knows where you will be able to buy these teas in a few months’ time. 

Eva and Chiu live tea to the full!  As you arrive at the magical wood-built house, Chiu’s pots are placed around the garden, by the pond, under the trees and around the house. A tea bush greets you on the front porch and there are gongs to announce your arrival.  Inside the house, Chiu’s porcelain drinking bowls and pots are displayed on window sills and shelves and are in use every day in the kitchen.  I’ll write more next time about Eva and Chiu’s propagation programme, about the work of the research team, about the delicious dinner cooked with tea that we enjoyed at a local restaurant, and about the restaurant in Volcano Village that serves Eva’s Hawaii grown teas.

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