The Awards Ceremony
This very special event, held in Fortnum & Mason’s Drawing Room on the fourth floor of the store, was beautifully arranged and wonderfully uplifting. There was a happy buzz of excitement as guests arrived and mingled with friends around the room. I had been asked to act as emcee, and as the ceremony got under way, it was a real pleasure to invite the individual judges to the podium to present awards and certificates to winners in their specialist region of the world. Award winners who could not join us in person logged on via a video link so they could also enjoy the proceedings as the awards were presented, as winners expressed their delight and their thanks, and as heart-felt applause acknowledged the achievements of the tea makers.
As well as the awards that recognized the production of great teas, the six Special Awards marked a new appreciation of people in the tea world who work hard for their community, the environment, or maybe push boundaries. The Gaia Award went to Eva Lee, who grows tea in her forest garden in Volcano Village on Hawaii Island and has worked for years to encourage other tea growers to preserve the ecological balance of Hawaii’s natural habitats while also cultivating, harvesting, and processing teas that now sell to customers around the world.
The Maverick Award aims to reward bold, brave, creative tea producers who are developing successful experimental teas that don’t fall neatly into any one category. The 2022 Maverick award was presented to Tomoko Monnai of Iwanaga Tea Garden in Japan, where she manufactures her winning black tea, Iwanaga Ichigo 2022, which was also Highly Commended in the black tea category.
Lucy George from Peterson Tea Estate in Wales won the Pioneer Award, having successfully converted her family fruit farm into an impressive commercial tea farm, which produces extremely good black and green teas and a craft-brewed premium kombucha. As Lucy explained, “It certainly takes a good few years of hard work to produce Welsh tea! We have grown most of our tea plants from seed, which is carefully sourced from a number of different areas, including ex-Soviet Georgia and Ilam in Nepal. Each seed produces a unique plant, so growing in this way gives us huge genetic variance and the best possible chance of establishing high-quality plants that tolerate our climate.”
The Tea For Life Award went to Phyu Phyu Thwe, an accountant in London, who hired the services of Beverly Wainwright, Scotland’s extremely successful award-winning tea maker, to advise on the construction of a tea factory in Phyu’s family’s Mogok Village in Myanmar. Beverly travelled with Phyu to the village and taught a group of Phyu’s family to craft excellent-quality black, green, and white teas from their 180 acres of assamica tea bushes. Each month, approximately 25 kilograms of handmade teas are now sold to customers in the West, and that means that Phyu’s relations now have sustainable jobs. Phyu’s vision and selflessness, partnered with Beverly’s amazing tea-making skill, is very moving and often brings a very emotional tear to the eyes of those who hear the story.
The Best in Show Award went to a fresh, summer-picked black tea called Benifuki 2022 2nd Flush from the producer Ocha-no-Kajihara in Kumamoto, Japan. All the judges agreed it had been beautifully crafted, releasing a caramel aroma and a velvety smooth texture on the tongue. It had depth and character with notes of stone fruit and biscuit [cookie] in the liquor and a lingering sweet aftertaste. The 2-hectare tea farm was established in the 1950s and is today managed by the third and fourth generations of the Kajihara family. The company focuses on the manufacture of panned green teas, but the production of black tea has increased and now accounts for 30 percent of the farm’s output.
And the winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award was Indi Khanna, who for years has been helping others to grow and make better tea. The culmination of all his projects is the Tea Studio in the Nilgiri Hills in southern India, a small-scale, architect-designed tea factory that supports local smallholder farmers who cultivate and carefully harvest high-quality fresh tea shoots that they sell into the factory. Using Chinese tea-processing machinery, the all-female factory, managed by Indi’s daughter Muskan and a team of six local women, manufactures a very impressive range of black, green, white, and oolong teas.
Once the actual awards had all been presented, tea cocktails were poured, and pots of some of the winning teas were brewed and served with a delicious array of savory and sweet finger foods, and there was such a warm, happy atmosphere in the room that no one wanted to leave. But I think we can rest assured that in 2023, The Leafies will attract more teas from more origins and will bring to everyone’s notice some of the wonderful teas from less well-known and unusual locations as well as from traditional regions. The UKTA has proven that this event can attract interest from the global tea community, and The Leafies is now set to become an established event on the tea calendar.
Limited editions of some of the winning teas from The Leafies are available from Fortnum & Mason’s Rare Tea Counter and online from cantontea.com. The Leafies is open to all producers and retailers. If both enter the same tea, the producer would receive the accolade but the retailer would be able to credit their tea with the award for marketing. To learn more about The Leafies, go to ukteaacademy.co.uk/the-leafies.
To watch the Awards Ceremony, go to youtube.com/ watch?v=TKQpl1tEHkE.
Contributing Editor Jane Pettigrew, an international tea expert who has written many books on the subject, including her most recent, Jane Pettigrew’s World of Tea, is a recipient of the British Empire Medal. A former tearoom owner, she is a much-sought-after consultant to tea businesses and hotels, a conference speaker, and an award-winning tea educator who is co-founder and director of studies of the UK Tea Academy. Although her travels have taken her around the globe, she resides in London.
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