Our crew is welcomed into the Gatanga Industries Ltd in the Kenyan highlands of Murangá, each with a good strong cuppa of purple tea. It is a cool Wednesday afternoon and after touring some of the tea farms that supply this small tea factory with green leaf, we end up in a tasting room where we settle in for more cups of an array of specialty teas.
Our host, Kenyan tea master, Elizabeth Njeri is the plant manager at Gatanga Industries Ltd which has since 2018 specialised in manufacturing specialty teas for export—mostly. Tea tasting is a job Njeri has done for nearly two decades, having previously worked with the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) at Kangaita Tea Factory in Kirinyaga County for nearly 15 years.
The food scientist by training left KTDA as a senior supervisor in production, tasting and evaluating teas, and making recommendations, to join Gatanga Industries which together with Chinya Tea Development Company (Chinya)—a Chinese firm that focuses on the production of the gourmet teas.
"On a good day, four tonnes of specialty teas are processed at this factory. At least 70 percent of the teas produced here are sold on the international market—exported to China while the remainder is sold at high-end stores in Kenya and elsewhere in East Africa," says the tea connoisseur.
Njeri says she was drawn to these alternative methods of processing tea away from the time-honoured Kenyan CTC (Crush, Tear, and Curl) method suitable for use in blends popular in most black-tea markets, after learning of the benefits of green teas to the body.
Elizabeth Njeri, the tea master at Gatanga Industries Ltd, prepares specialty teas manufactured at the tea factory in Murang'a County.
Photo credit: Pauline Kairu | Nation Media Group
"Being a food scientist I'd always been fascinated by the many benefits that green tea confers to the body. Here, I got the opportunity to work with these special teas, where the processing involves preserving most of their inherent goodness. We carefully have to control the plucking, withering, rolling, oxidation, or fermentation and drying of loose leaf tea using traditional Asian methods," she explains, "as opposed to how the black crushed tea is made. The KTDA process is CTC also called maceration which involves the leaves being passed through rollers and crushers to produce tiny black granules which stand up well to being mixed with milk and sweeteners."
"With specialty teas when you put our tea in water the leaf opens to give you all the benefits of that leaf. It is not recommended that you use sweetener with it," she adds.
The gourmet tea enthusiast joined Gatanga Industries in 2018 a year after it began operations and has been undergoing training from experts brought into the country by Chinya.
"Tea processing is an art and through the Chinese, we've learnt a lot. They are passing on special tea-making crafts developed and refined over hundreds and thousands of years in Asia. Now I can say I'm experienced in making all kinds of teas. I've learnt things I never could have been taught in the four years that I went to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. My eyes have been opened to exciting and healthier new ways of making tea," she says as she takes us around the factory, "In fact now I'm trying to transfer this knowledge to personnel at KTDA because they are also trying to establish new products like green tea in the market."
In the tasting room aside from the purple tea, green tea, and hibiscus teas that we get to enjoy, she also brews yellow tea, white tea, silvertip, and golden tip tea which come in different colours. Some have lighter bodies or milder tastes and contain less caffeine compared to the black tea we are used to. These premium teas are highly sought-after on the international market.
"Most of these teas come from the same tea bushes. It is just the level of the bud and the methods or processes involved in manufacturing that differentiate them when it comes to the taste," Njeri observes. "Each of these teas develops their unique characteristics depending on harvesting season and how we treat them during processing, some depending mainly on the climatic conditions during harvesting. For instance, what we harvest during heavy rains is very different from what we harvest during hotter seasons and denote the character of the tea we make from them," says Njeri.
"There are those that we allow to steam or oxidize, roll, allow to air-dry, or pan-fired and then there are those that we minimally process dry and package like the white and silvertip teas," she explains as she adds, that in the creation of the more intricate teas the process used can get even more complex. "We have international clients who want their tea rolled by hand which is a very time-consuming process and they'll pay anything for it. We call it hand-rolling and it's extremely expensive but we're here to satisfy the customer's needs," she says. "Hand-rolled tea, unlike the machine-rolled one, combines heat and pressure from the human body. It is a traditional Japanese technique that some people still treasure and are willing to pay for."
Another example is Pu-er tea which requires fermenting and then storing for many years. "The longer it stays in the fermentation process the more expensive it becomes," she says.
"Kenyans are yet to get onto the green tea bandwagon, to fully appreciate the true benefits of taking green teas," says Njeri, "These are all teas that have essential health benefits, and I have taken it upon myself to move around churches telling people about the goodness of these teas especially purple tea."
She explains that loose leaf tea and the methods they use to make the tea help them keep their essential oils, healthy oxidants, and vitamins.
She says she has experimented with the teas and has realised their benefits together with her family. "Purple tea especially has been very beneficial for my husband and me. We both have high blood pressure which we have managed using the purple tea and hibiscus— a herbal infusion."
Njeri is also a collector of gourmet teas. These and tea cupping and tasting sets and tiny tot-like glasses adorn her office cupboards. From one of the shelves, she draws what she calls an Oolong tea she bought in China for Sh6000 for only 50gms. Oolong tea is produced through a process including withering the plant under strong sun and oxidation before curling and twisting."
