Blog

Those of you who visit the Tea House or see us at various Food & Drink Events will have met Haydn who is now a permanent member of our team at Comins Tea.  Haydn came to the Tea House in the first few weeks after opening & started working on Saturdays soon after.  It would be fair to say that tea has captured Haydn in the same way it has Michelle & I & since [very successfully] finishing school Haydn has decided to come and work and travel with us as we grow our tea business over the next few years.  ...

The next leg of our journey took us to us to one of the most fascinating and exciting tea estates I have ever been to. Idalgashinna began life as a tea estate in 1984. It quickly became one of the pioneers of organic tea farming and was certified Organic back in 1989. This pioneering nature was further exemplified by it being categorised as Biodynamic since 1999. More on what this means exactly later. Further to this it has acted under the Fairtrade banner since 1992. 274 hectares of estate producing around 200 tonnes of some of the finest tea in Sri Lankan each...

The next leg of our journey took us to us to one of the most fascinating and exciting tea estates I have ever been to. Idalgashinna began life as a tea estate in 1984. It quickly became one of the pioneers of organic tea farming and was certified Organic back in 1989. This pioneering nature was further exemplified by it being categorised as Biodynamic since 1999. More on what this means exactly later. Further to this it has acted under the Fairtrade banner since 1992. 274 hectares of estate producing around 200 tonnes of some of the finest tea in Sri Lankan each...

On a quiet evening a few weeks ago I was sitting in the Tea House doing some paperwork and the phone rang.  At this time of night a call is usually family or friends but this time it happened to be a fellow tea enthusiast who had visited the Tea House & taken tea with us.  Since starting our business [& in my previous business life] we have had to make many speculative calls to growers, makers & tea experts seeking advice, help or just the chance for discussion around topics we were trying to understand so I recognised the tone...

Several days into our trip we headed away from the coast towards Deniyaya.  At Comins we always talk about connection and many of our new contacts come through people we meet who offer personal recommendations that we then follow up on our trips.  As we head off towards these new gardens we never know what we will find.  In this case Michelle had met with the wonderful team from the Sri Lankan tea board at an event with the Guild of Fine Food in London earlier this year.  On sharing our story, our approach to sourcing and the types of people we...