With the estate losing money growing vegetables and picking tea, Beverly knew she needed to educate herself. “I knew nothing about tea, so the first thing I did was to study and learn about it,” she explains. “I started to learn basic tea-making, but I had no equipment and had never made tea before.” After the better part of a year, she figured out how to make tea by hand, literally sleeping with tea leaves in her bedroom and getting up in the night to turn the leaves. “I made the most terrible tea you’ve ever tasted for quite a long time,” she laughs, “until I started to think, ‘Come on, girl, you have a science degree.’” Starting from scratch, she identified the variables in the tea-making process and then pushed each a little. From leaf plucking to field maintenance, she immersed herself in the various tasks to learn how to improve output and efficiency. “I was going to ask these ladies to pick differently because I knew that if we were going to be making tea by hand, it had to be beautiful little leaves,” Beverly notes.
To document the tea-making at Amba, she made videos, which she posted online. Those clips caught the attention of US-based tea purveyor Harney & Sons, who asked for a sample. Beverly remembers not knowing who Michael Harney was but sent him a sample anyway. A few weeks later, she received a reply from him, “We like your tea; we place an order for 10 kilos.” Somehow, without a tea factory, she and her team managed to fill the order.
The burgeoning success with tea sales prompted Amba’s owners to hire tea consultant Nigel Melican to advise on field practices and eventually on equipment sourcing for a little factory. “My husband came out to project-manage the building of the factory and help set up the administrative systems,” Beverly says. Recognizing that the estate wouldn’t make enough money from specialty tea, Beverly looked for other revenue streams for Amba. She transformed the bungalow into an award-winning guesthouse and trained the local staff in hygiene, basic menus, and meal preparation. She set up coffee roasting and a jam kitchen with the idea of selling the coffee and jam to other upscale guesthouses. “By the time I left, we had jam, coffee, herbs, and tea,” she notes. “I developed several different teas. The Vangedi Pekoe, which I think they now call Thieves Tea, came from a technique one of the ladies learned from her grandmother and taught to me.” After almost five years of fruitful, though exhausting, work at Amba, Beverly and her husband decided to return to Scotland where he had a job waiting.
Beverly soon discovered there were many people growing tea in Scotland, but they didn’t know how to make tea. So, she set about to build a tea factory. “I keep trying to escape tea, but so far, it isn’t letting me,” she chuckles. Since 2021, she has made tea for many Scottish growers, including Tea Scotland and Tea Gardens of Scotland, and has helped develop blends such as Kinnettles Gold, 9 Ladies Dancing, and The Gathering.
With a passion for teaching—she’s a tutor with the UK Tea Academy—and for empowering others, Beverly hopes to make her factory in Scotland obsolete someday. “I always expected that people would want to make their own tea. My idea was, if they’re going to make tea, let’s at least make sure it’s well-made.” Fortnum & Mason now carries some of the teas Beverly has had a hand in creating through her consultancy work in Scotland, at Mogok tea farm in Myanmar, and at the Great Mississippi Tea Company in the United States, and several of these have won awards in tea competitions. Most recently, she helped Fleur de Lis Tea Company in Louisiana develop and launch its inaugural black tea called Big Easy.
“I have been very lucky and privileged to work with some amazing people and everything that has been achieved has been down to team effort,” clarifies Beverly. “The thing I’m most proud of has been seeing folk blossom and gain confidence and pride in what they are doing. I have only really played a small role in the tea places I have worked with and helped develop.”
To learn more about Beverly’s work and the tour she will lead in May 2023 to tea farms in Mississippi and Louisiana, go to scottishteafactory.co.uk.
