The first step towards a cup of Ceylon’s finest, two leaves and a bud handpicked on Somerset Estate in Sri Lanka’s Talawakelle region. ‘Coarse plucking’ where the third and fourth leaves are picked, bring an undesirable taint to the tea. The same applies in the case of machine harvested tea; whilst tea has many parallels with wine, this is not one of them, for the nature and delicacy of the tender, fresh shoots of the plant do not lend themselves to machine hearvesting.
