One half of the Dilmah brand — Dilhan Fernando — laughs when asked how he feels about his name being used as part of the moniker of his family's single-origin tea. "I suppose we are used to it," adds the youngest son of Dilmah's founder, Merrill J. Fernando. His older brother, Malik, makes up the other half of Dilmah, named from a combination of the first syllables of both names put together. "But it's a big responsibility because when our own name is there, it means we have to make sure the product is good."
Tea pickers on Dilmah's Opata estate.
Dilmah launched in 1988 and is currently one of the top ten branded teas in the world. Both brothers are in the family business today and it was in his teens that Dilhan's interest in tea burgeoned.
"My brother and I saw my father build this business and we saw his suffering because it was a very difficult time for the first producers [to get accepted]. We saw his passion and in a way we understood because when you see what tea is about, you see how beautiful it is. From the agricultural side, it's spectacularly beautiful. But ultimately, the greatest pleasure for us is to deal with a herb that is so uniquely healthy. It protects you from all sorts of lifestyle diseases today and tea is only to love."
Without a doubt, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the finest teas of the world are two long-entwined components. In the past, most of the tea was taken and sold in England, but the tea-producing nation itself was reaping little of the profits, as much of it was going to the middlemen and tea giants, which is when all of the value addition took place. It was this frustration, borne from the unfair trade and a vision of wanting something better for his toiling countrymen that triggered Merrill J. Fernando to build up Dilmah to what it is today: fresh tea that is packaged right at the origin, under a Sri Lankan banner. In other words, it meant changing all the rules about how the tea industry was run.
Dilhan Fernando smells dark tea leaves that symbolise the strength and character of the beverage.
"Being a colony before meant controlled prices that we had no choice in," Dilhan, director of Dilmah, explains. "My father changed that; he wanted to offer tea direct from the origin because it has a very low level of moisture. As tea goes to different countries, it is mixed and absorbs moisture, so it loses its antioxidants, flavours and natural goodness. If it is to be fresh, it has to be packed as soon as possible after the tea is picked. Even today, it is up to 12 months before picked tea finally reaches the customer. My father was the first to integrate the whole process at the origin so the tea is in a package within two to three days and then immediately shipped off."
Today, 99% of the teas in the world market are mixed. This means that large companies buy tea from everywhere and blend the likes of leaves from China, Argentina, India and so on together, so that it can be sold at a cheaper price. Dilhan finds it a great pity that tea has become such a commodity that little respect remains for the plant.
"Taking tea from one place then mixing it with something from elsewhere makes you lose the beauty and character of the place it came from. The aroma and taste of tea is a fingerprint of nature from a certain terroir and for us it's something very beautiful," he says. "Adding flavours is OK because there's a new generation of tea drinkers who want different teas, as long as you add a gentle amount to keep a balance. But what happens most times is you have a cheap tea with a lot of flavour so it tastes like Coca-Cola or whatever."
There is seemingly an infinite variation of tea leaves, despite growing on a small teardrop island of 65,000km². Sunshine, wind, humidity, elevation, soil and location all play a part. Whereas tea leaves from the top of a mountain could be light and as golden as honey, leaves from the foot of the same mountain could be thick, dark and almost tar-like. Even tea that has gone through an afternoon of rain will taste different from tea that is picked in the morning.
These pure, unblended tastes of nature from the varied estates that the company has do come with greater costs, challenges and disadvantages though. Nevertheless, Dilhan says that his family has always chosen to take the difficult but "good" way, as opposed to the cheap and easy one.
"You can't make good tea if you cut too many corners. When we have pests, we use biological containment, which is to find a natural enemy of the pest, rather than just spray chemicals. You can throw chemicals and fertiliser really easily and you'll get good crops for a short time but you ruin the earth. When I first started out doing this, 90% of the doors we knocked on said, 'Go away, we're not interested' [because of higher prices]. Now, it's 50%, as people are slowly beginning to understand that we are competing against tea that is made in a very different way."
With no middleman, most of the revenue returns right to them. To be more specific, it goes to conservation projects, schools, scholarships and hospitals for their workers across the 25,000 acres of tea plantations. Considering the growing success of Dilmah, the Fernando family could easily be rolling around in money, but their commitment to providing top-notch tea is only equalled by their infectiously inspiring drive to lend a hand to the underprivileged.
Behind each box of Dilmah lining the supermarket shelves, is the biggest foundation in Sri Lanka, MJF Charitable Foundation, which is also among the biggest in Asia. They aren't donors, but the number of projects they spearhead (over 150) almost exceed the flavours of tea they offer — an overwhelmingly admirable feat for a company that started out as a small family business.
Through various projects and incentives, 150,000 lives, from disabled children and war widows, along with the fate of elephants and rare frogs, have been changed. There are no pictures of frogs, the first casualty of climate change that their research centre is focusing on, on the tea box packaging to raise awareness of their plight. Dilhan shrugs: "To do a real humanitarian job, you have to disconnect with the marketing."
With conviction, he adds: "You can eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and that's only so much money. If every company shared their success with the underprivileged, the world would be a very different place. We could change the world. This is the philosophy at Dilmah." Dilhan's outlook comes as no surprise as this is, after all, a business that was born out of compassion for his country's livelihood to begin with.
