Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/48160
building a line of orthodox manufacture in an existing CTC fac- tory. Further planting inspection led to selecting which plants were best suited for white teas, green teas, oolongs and other tea types. Kenya's specialty teas are processed at one KTDA fac- tory with machinery Walker helped install about a decade ago when Kenya made its return to orthodox processing. Walker says the factory puts out around 95 percent CTC teas and 5 percent orthodox teas. He adds that while Kenya is producing different tea types now, the country has only just scratched the surface of what it may be able to create. "We've got to the point now in Kenya where we can make some very interesting white teas, oolongs, and even a yellow and purple tea. It's getting there, but it's still very much in its infancy," Walker says. More KTDA fac- tories are being earmarked to produce orthodox teas, and Walker says orthodox tea is also being produced in the Kericho area by a large private company. While the pieces are in place for Kenya to generate tea for the specialty market, Walker says the reality is that the market's small size poses a challenge. "I don't mean to oversimplify it, but this is the problem: When you have a country making 250,000 tons of tea, what is the specialty tea market compared to the whole tea market?" asks Walker. "It's very small. The specialty tea market is maybe 10 percent, probably less. Although it's growing at such a huge rate here in the United States, it's still miniscule when you compare it with the bulk tea market in the world." Walker says he learned this the hard way when he and his associates couldn't find enough buyers for the country's initial batch of orthodox teas. "The first foray of teas coming out of Kenya here was somewhat of a disaster," he says. "We brought in a container, and it took us months and months and months to sell the tea." Still, Walker says it's worthwhile for Kenya to stay involved in the specialty market as an "area of interest." He says the bulk of Kenya's tea exports go to about four origins, and if anything were to happen to these buyers, Kenya would risk losing substantial revenue. "Even though the specialty market is so small, you can't just shut it out," he says. "You've got to keep your toe in the water." ENTERING THE FRAY W'Njuguna says the work done by Walker and others on ortho- dox processing and varied tea types has been key to her company's early stages, and now she's excited to set on the mission of pushing Kenyan teas into the specialty market in North America. "For so long, Kenyan teas have been used most prominently—in America and in the rest of the world—for flavoring purposes," she says. "But now Kenya has developed these specialty teas, and we want people to experience the quality. We really just want to put these teas front and center." It's the ultimate fulfillment for W'Njuguna, who is now seeing her family's hard work come to fruition in the cup. "I really owe this to my father, my grandfather and all the tea farmers that our company represents," she says. "When you drink our teas, you are savoring the history of the larger tea story and the human rights tapestry of Kenya." FRESH CUP MAGAZINE !