It is perhaps fitting if not serendipitous that one of England’s oldest country estates, Tregothnan Estate, where cultivation of the Camellia flower was pioneered over two centuries ago, is also home to Britain’s first tea garden, tea being a variety of Camellia (Camellia sinensis). While the notion of cultivating tea may have originated from floral traditions culminating in the magnificent botanical garden established seven centuries ago at Tregothnan Estate, with the application of robotics to tea plucking, Tregothnan Tea Estate has managed to fuse tradition and innovation, likely making it the world’s most modern tea garden as well.
In the late ‘90s, then Commercial and Garden Director Jonathon Jones (he is now managing director), a botanist hired only a few years earlier, marveled at how Camelia plants had been flourishing there for so long. He mused to the owners that tea, belonging to the same genus, might also be grown on the property, and they thought it was a joke.
Jones was not deterred. “I put together a paper – a research paper – about Camellia for foliage, flowers, fruit, and tea because our Camellia is the first example of outdoor Camellia growing in this country, [which] took place at Tregothnan… around 200 years ago,” Jones explains.
“I just wondered if there was something we could do to celebrate that two centuries of working with the Camellia genus but maybe in a more 21st century way,” he adds.
Recognizing that Jones had put on paper an idea that he had thought out quite thoroughly and to which he was committed, and being progressive in their thinking, the owners of Tregothnan Estate decided it might well be pioneering rather than absurd to get behind it.
Alongside Tregothnan, Jones applied for the prestigious Nuffeld Farming Scholarship to learn about the cultivating of Camellia sinensis, which he won. This was a reassuring sign: With the enterprising agriculturalists at Nuffeld being convinced that cultivating tea in Cornwall could be a viable proposition, confidence in the new venture was burnished.
Jones had also applied to the Churchill Fellowship under which, “fellows are funded to discover the latest innovations and best practice in any practical issue they care passionately about, anywhere in the world,” and his application was successful.
For Jones, the awards funded a journey of discovery to plantations all over the world. He set about learning to cultivate a commodity that has long been synonymous with the British identity but had never actually been grown in Britain! Initially, Jones thought he would be viewed with skepticism in the industry. He was delighted to be met with enthusiasm, and was charmed by how encouraging other planters were of his (excuse the pun) groundbreaking ambitions.
He says he learned the most the time he spent in Darjeeling, India, where during the 1800s, in the days of empire, the British first planted Chinese-sourced tea plants. The verdant and panoramic slopes had previously been chosen as the site of a sanitorium so wistful British subjects working during most of the year in the punishing hot climate of India might get some feel of home. The familiarity was not lost on Jones.
“The climate [of Darjeeling] is quite similar to Cornwall’s in that it's often cold and wet,” Jones says. The experience left him feeling that the same variety of tea plants were suited to grow where he ultimately planned to establish the tea garden.
Noble Farmers
Buoyed by his experiences, the owners of Tregothnan welcomed Jones back and asked him to get started, for while Noble in lineage, they are at their core a family of farmers.
Older than Buckingham Palace and acquired in 1334, Tregothnan Estate is the traditional home of the Boscawen family of Cornwall in the southeast of England, whose head, Evelyn Arthur Hugh Boscawen, holds title of Right Honorable Viscount Falmouth, the tenth of his line.
With so much activity in modern Britain centered in its cities, Tregothnan Estate, occupying a sprawling area of some 25,000 acres, is an anomaly, as a rare representation of a private estate, supporting many families and communities in a protected environment. Tregothnan (which in Old Cornish means the house at the head of the valley) operates as their website states, “very much as it might have done nearly 700 years earlier” with tenants and cultivation, typifying the estate’s daily activities. Indeed, Lord Falmouth’s predecessor, the late George Hugh Boscawen, was chairman of the Royal Cornwall Agricultural Association.
The Formative Years of "Tea Grown in England"
Back in Cornwall, Jones was on a mission.
“Once I’d done the research, I had a very strong feeling that this is something Tregothnan should do, and it's inimitable, because, although other people [in the UK] will grow tea and have done, they won't be the first. They can never have that claim of putting the Englishness into English tea and making the most British tea in history,” Jones says, proudly.
With acidic soil and a mild climate due to the moderating influence of the sea, Tregothnan has the ideal climate for tea cultivation. Being eight miles inland from the coast, the tea garden is protected from the salt air, which is corrosive to the plants.
Jones’ desire to pay homage to the Camellia genus in a 21st century way turned out to be prophetic. The cultivation really began to pick up as the new century came into being.
“Back in 1999, we put in our first tea garden just for trial purposes, and then in 2001, we started to scale that up because the early signs were reasonably promising,” Jones says.
Jones started with China Bush (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis), which was acquired from the Darjeeling area and produces tea of a light floral flavor. He then diversified to some Camellia sinensis assamica (the Indian variety native to the state of Assam), which has more body and from which English Breakfast tea was originally made. He also worked with hybrids of the two. More recently, he has incorporated some Vietnamese variety.
The first harvest, which was more the result of an experiment, having been carried out on a small scale with limited resources, yielded just 28 grams of tea. Rather than being discouraged, Jones was inpsired by the output, mainly because of its excellent character. Jones had proven that high-quality orthodox tea could be grown at the estate, so the experiment was deemed successful both by him and Lord Falmouth. He expected yield to increase as more tea bushes were planted, and this is what happened over time in a “staccato” fashion.
“Even though the numbers were tiny [at first], it gave confidence, I think, to Lord Falmouth that this really was a new market – super premium,” Jones says.
However, scaling-up the venture turned out to be a challenge in ways that Jones didn’t initially anticipate because there were so many stakeholders at the estate who are involved the land and buildings, which had nothing to do with cultivating tea, whom he had to get onside. So, he had to add to the experiment in increments and the increase in yield was gradual. Grams became kilograms. Tens became dozens and then they hit 100, which grew to hundreds of kilograms. “And it sort of just grew like that,” he says.
“The key thing was, though, the price we were able to maintain per kilo per gram was significant,” Jones says.
The price actually rose as yields increased because of employing a pricing strategy that relied upon consumers being willing to pay a premium to buy the very first and, initially, the only English tea that was grown and produced in England.
The key to Jones’ approach to pricing was to differentiate the tea produced at Tregothnan Estate from what British people commonly understood at the time to be tea. The industry in the UK had been pricing tea at a very low level – as low as 1-2 pence per cup. When Jones unveiled that he was thinking more in the range of 2 pounds per cup, tea industry insiders in the UK were quick to push back.
“This is where the tea industry was wrong, and I don't mean wrong in an unkind way. I just think they didn't believe that tea could be ‘premiumized,’" he says, noting that one person even told him the ceiling for premium pricing in tea was three times the average price.
So, by British standards, Jones was breaking the cardinal rules of tea pricing. His confidence came from separating the cost of production from the value people might put on enjoying a cup of Tregothnan tea as a truly English experience. It was more about understanding and factoring in the English psychology of promoting new products made in England – this too, the first of its kind. By looking at Tregothnan as an expression of Britishness rather than merely a commodity, Jones was able to command a price that truly differentiated Tregothnan tea from other teas sold in England.
“We were selling an experience," says Jones. "We divorced ourselves from commodity tea pricing, and we looked at what the market could take. We said [at the time], we believe that there are enough people out there who will buy the first English tea, the first truly English tea, as long as it's a really good product with the potential to get even better.”
Jones notes that people easily spend five pounds or more for a glass of wine. “Why won't we do that on a glass of tea?” he asks, rhetorically.
Season, Variety, and Market
Tregothnan Estate has a growing season from April to October, much like Darjeeling, to which Jones compares the microclimate in which Tregothnan is situated. Their spring harvest, or ‘first flush’ as it is known in the tea world, begins in May with another flushing occurring sometime in June. Thereafter, depending on the availability of rainfall and the temperature, plucking continues on and off through October. This last phase isn’t so much a flush as it is a continuum of harvesting as conditions permit.
The teas produced at the estate range from black to green to oolong. In addition to the single estate leaf that is sold, Tregothnan also sells blends typically with Assam leaf, which has a strong body, that, among others, is sourced from Glenburn Tea Estate in India. The blending permits them to make (within a range of blacks) Classic English Tea, English Breakfast Tea, Cornish Tea, and their Great British Tea, which is the strongest tea and has Cornish leaves blended heavily with Assam.
They also produce premium Earl Grey, which is a blend of rare Cornish tea leaves from Tregothnan’s tea gardens and the finest Assam leaf, infused with pure, natural Bergamot oil. This blend has a lot to do with tradition. “Lord Falmouth’s great-grandfather 8 times over had been Earl Grey," says Jones. "So [producing Earl Grey Tea] was important.”
Their green tea is made from Tregothnan leaves that are the same type as those used to produce green tea in China.
“Oolongs have become a big part of what we do….But the most popular, I suppose, is our most oxidized black teas,” Jones says.
Tregothnan also makes some fragrant teas such as rose tea, oak smoked, and fennel-infused and lavender-infused tea. In addition, they sell chamomile decaf tea, which is a popular night tea as it helps people relax; a tisane cut from Lemon Verbena leaves; and a Manuka leaf-infused tea, which is made from New Zealand Manuka plants that are grown in Tregothnan. Manuka notably feeds bees that produce a type of honey that is associated with helping to control high blood sugar. It follows that they sell Manuka honey harvested from the estate’s private walled gardens as well.
From time-to-time, Tregothnan sells special edition teas, like their Coronation Tea to mark the ascendance of Charles III to the throne of the United Kingdom.
Tregothnan began as a fully organic tea garden, but it became too difficult to control the weeds that sprouted up, making the garden look messy. “Let's just call it organic mess for five to seven years,” Jones recalls. "We went from a mess to creating stretches of garden that looked beautiful, but we had to deviate from organic farming to do so.”
That said, with the weeds under control, and the garden now looking very scenic, Jones thinks the time is right to go back to how he started. “I think this is the year we have to go back to being organic, certified organic,” he says.
Despite the challenges faced by Jones, the tea is selling well. Although much of their sales is direct through their website, Tregothnan has found good customers in high-end boutiques, hotels, and in first class on Great Western Railway, which Jones regards as an important customer.
The upmarket department store, Fortnum & Mason, also buys their tea and features it at their rare tea counter. Even rarer, Tregothnan sells tea to China, which hardly ever imports tea.
Brexit, initially, hurt the tea garden’s sales. “Germany was quite a big market for us. And then suddenly, it wasn't. It just became too difficult,” Jones laments. “The Europeans were just being difficult…penalizing us for Brexit.”
Jones ended up managing some integrated approaches to shipping that have since facilitated selling Tregothnan tea in European markets again.
Europe is a market that appreciates tea without any additives. That really isn’t the case in the UK. Tea with milk and (often) sugar is still considered to be the national drink. Even so, enjoying tea as it is – and not just heavily oxidized black teas – is emerging as a preference in the local market alongside the traditional tea-drinking population to which Tregothnan mainly caters, at present. Jones admits that getting Britons to alter their tea consumption habits is something of a daunting task.
“The problem we've had until now is that British people see it [tea-drinking] as being part of who they are, and they won't even contemplate the idea of not knowing everything there is to know about tea. So, they're a very difficult audience, because they think they know everything,” Jones says with a smile. “[Most] don't even know what good tea is.”
This gap in the customer base is something that Tregothnan is trying to fill by promoting their single estate teas and less highly oxidized varieties.
Many in the UK beverage industry predict that change in tea consumption habits in Britain will come generationally as younger people experiment with tea as an alternative to alcoholic beverages. For example, during the Pandemic, many millennials found themselves brewing tea at home instead of grabbing a coffee on the go. They enjoy tea's health and relaxation benefits.
Tea producers in Britain aspire for an evolution similar to today's flourishing UK vineyards, which were in their nascency in the 1970s. A pioneer among them, Jones is hopeful.
“So that's taking a long time to shift,” says Jones. “But it is shifting, and I think the new teas that are coming in are proving that point.”
Robots and Tea
The British tea farms that have been founded since the establishment of Tregothnan Tea Estate are relatively small in comparison to Tregothnan, which spans around 150 acres, or in miles of tea, 29 miles. This is certainly not vast compared to gardens situated in counties known for producing tea, but larger than their English, Welsh, and Scottish cousins. This may be attributed to the high price of labor in the UK. While other tea cultivation operations rely heavily upon participation of the owners, supplemented with casual or volunteer labor, Tregothnan’s aristocratic owners need not wade into the tea bushes for tea to be plucked.
While more labor is available on an estate like Tregothnan compared to a more artisanal farm, the cost of labor is still high. To deal with this issue, Jones and his team at Tregothnan Estate have been experimenting with mechanized plucking since the pandemic. They had perhaps been aware of handheld machines under development in countries from China to Kenya, but wanted a solution that was would not only automate the process, but also do so without affecting the green footprint of the garden.
Their efforts, which involved years of development and trials led by engineer Tom Gowan, culminated in the development of a machine that they have dubbed “Teabot.” It was essentially modified from a berry-picking prototype to a robotic tea-plucker. Mechanized picking of berries bruised the fruit, but damaging the tea leaf before withering is actually beneficial as it begins the oxidation process. So, even though plucking tea must be done with care, it doesn’t need to be quite as delicate as picking fruit.
Using robotic "fingers," the leaves are plucked to a threshold level, ensuring separation of the freshest leaf tips. Once two leaves and a bud are pried from the bush, the plucked leave is blown into a large collection receptacle.
Teabot runs on a track laid on each side of the bush, so the machine can straddle the plants and, from above, perform the plucking. Unlike other mechanized pluckers, which are either single-person handheld or two-person held on each side of the bush, Teabot runs on its own with Gowan walking behind to ensure that the plucking is done smoothly and at the right level. He adjusts Teabot as needed. In the future, Jones doesn’t expect such supervision will be needed.
With solar panels on the front of the machine, while facing the sun, Teabot is charged. Jones says that they expect the machine to be able to pluck five miles of tea on a single charge. After plucking, Teabot simply parks itself to face the sun to recharge via the onboard solar array. Jones insists that the robot is capable of plucking top-quality leaf and can perform work equivalent to that of around 112 pluckers.
Teabot is the first of its kind in the world as far as Jones is aware, but he notes it could have easily been produced elsewhere.
“So, you can buy almost every component of what we've made in China or Japan. But what we've done is bring together those components in the way that they hadn't, and I don't think they were motivated by the same interests that we had. So, ours is the first solar-powered robotic tea harvester,” Jones proclaims. “If there's mechanical harvesters [in other countries]… they're not fully robotic, and they're not fully PV, or you know, electric. So, it's just curious why it wasn't a bigger thing.”
Tea Tourism, Lessons from Coffee and the Outlook for Tregothnan
For a while, Tregothnan tea gardens were not open to the public, preempting any movement towards capitalizing on the growing tea tourism industry.
“The tea business was set up to help pay for the botanical collection, the botanical conservation, and the garden," says Jones. "If you've got people accessing everything, it is another management problem. So, opening up the tea gardens was also not really an early opportunity because the tea gardens were very close to the botanical gardens.”
However, over the last five years, with gardens on both sides of the Fal River, tours called “River Garden Tours” have been established, which enable tourists to enjoy the garden, learn about the teas, their cultivation, processing, and tastes, but keep them away from the botanical garden, which must still be protected for conservation purposes.
“We can now actually host guests every day,” Jones says. “That’s just starting, but that is where the most potential lies for the first British tea in history. This is where it's made; this is how you make it; this is how you taste it; and really demystify it and allow people to get involved.”
Although tourism can serve as an alternative stream of income, for Jones, his enthusiasm for it comes from the opportunity to engage with the public.
“You get real interactions with customers instead of just sending tea out to places,” Jones says. “[The public] come and they give you real-time feedback. So, there's lots of reasons why we like doing it.”
Cottages around the estate, situated along the rivers Truro and Fal, having scenic views of the water and foliage, are available where tourists can book accommodations for parties of two to six.
Tourists will have young tea plants to examine in 2025 as Jones is planning to establish new gardens in 2025. For these, the robot plucker will have to be adjusted as some of the areas being explored for expansion are quite sloped.
So, the outlook for Tregothnan is positive in terms of increasing their production of tea, exploring new markets, and bringing more people to the estate. Jones just hopes that enhanced education will bring new appreciation that tea is not simply the beverage that Britons are accustomed to consuming; it actually constitutes a diverse range of beverages to be consumed at different times of the day and for different occasions. He hopes that people coming to Tregothnan and going through the tour from plucking to processing to tasting, will give British people a better understanding of the beverage they think they know.
Jones believes that if the industry in the UK and the consuming public perceive tea differently and can take a lesson from coffee in placing a value on it, then tea gardens in the UK will increasingly thrive. Moreover, a new market for premium tea will emerge in the same way it has for coffee.
“The two things that coffee has taught people is to, number one, spend more. I mean it’s unbelievable. And two, slow down,” Jones says. “Those two things are exactly what we want from tea. If you can teach people to slow down and spend more, you will have a better tea experience.”
Jones is optimistic about the advancement of premium tea and the diversification of tea in the British market.
“Tea has a strong future,” Jones insists. “When you look at the good things that go on in it, the range of tastes, the healthy aspects, all of the good things are there that other drinks would struggle to match.”
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