Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/491356
68 STiR tea & coffee industry international let in the sunlight and warmth. The music of J.S. Bach and other classical composers plays 24 hours a day inside the tunnels and the plants are thriving. In the growing sea- son, Macke hand plucks the fresh shoots to make white tea, which she sells and serves at the tearoom and also blends with other botanicals such as chamomile and mint. In New York State, Mark and Lily Lin are growing tea at their Finger Lakes Tea Company, Seneca Falls, NY. The Lins are from Qingtian in China's Zhejiang province and the entire family, in both China and the US, is involved in this project. Seed has been imported from China and 55,000 plants are already planted on 30 acres of land where soil from glacial deposits are naturally acidic and have the right pH for tea culti- vation. The bushes are expected to have matured by 2014 and Finger Lake Mao Feng green, black and dark teas will then be sold and served at the family's tea store and restaurant alongside other imported teas. Hawaii Update John Cross's tea garden, the oldest in Hawaii, was established in 1993 on the lower slopes of Mauna Kea Volcano in Hakalau on the Hämäkua Coast on the Big Island. Cross was previously in charge of sugar cane production, which gradually came to an end in Hawaii in the 1980s and 90s, and he was put in charge of carrying out trial plant- ing with tea as a potential replacement crop. He planted two varietals that had been developed at the University of Hawaii Wailua Experiment Station and today, his crop is harvested and processed as 'Makai' ('facing the ocean') black tea by Eva Lee and Chiu Leong of Tea Hawaii. Eva Lee and Chiu Leong grow tea in the forest garden in Volcano Village. Lee has been a driving force in the development of tea cultivation in Hawaii. She and Leong propagate, consult, teach, grow and make their own Tea Hawaii green, white and black teas and process leaf harvested from other growers' gardens, including John Cross's tea garden. Tea Hawaii also works closely with other tea farmers on the island to help get their teas to market. Mike Riley has a quarter of an acre of tea plants growing in the shade of tree ferns and other native forest trees and he specializes in making hand- processed 'Mauka' oolongs (Mauka means 'facing the mountain') and a small quan- tity of greens and whites. "We get about 150 inches of rain a year so irrigation is not necessary and even in our wettest months the plants thrive in our rain forest." And at Volcano Winery, 4,000 feet up on the east side of Hawaii's Big Island, Alex Wood has 1,000 mixed tea varietals in the ground. "We make four types of tea: Silver Needle, White, Black and a coarser version of our Black that we use in our Infusion Tea Wine. We process the Silver Needle and White here at the winery and Eva Lee processes the Blacks for us. We retail the Silver Needle, White and Black out of our Tasting Room," he said. At Ahualoa Tea Farm, 2,500 feet up on the slopes of Mauna Kea, also on the Big Island, Ben Discoe has 500 plants in the ground and plans to eventually plant up to Virginia, Michigan and New York State In Virginia, the Ramos family have been growing tea on 20 acres of their family farm in Spotsylvania since 2012. As well as growing tea, they also manufacture a range of Virginia First Tea Farm products such as laundry detergent, soap, and shampoo using green tea extract that is currently sourced from South Korea, but which in the longer term will be produced from their own plants. In Michigan, nurse, educator and horticulturalist Angela Macke grows tea bio-dynamically at her Light of Day Organic and Farm and Tea Shop in Traverse City. She grows mainly botanicals but has a hundred tea plants, propagated from seeds from Hawaii, which grow happily alongside mint, ginseng, herbs and flow- ers at her riverside farm. In the cold winter months, the baby bushes are protected inside polytunnels whose sides are rolled up in more clement weather to The tea garden at Papaikou, overlooking Onomea Bay, Hawaii island. New leaf cuttings. Christine Park's camellia forest.