The Azores archipelago lies at the juncture of the African, European, and American continental shelves, about one thousand miles due west of the Strait of Gibraltar and two thousand miles east of the United States. The largest island (Sao Miguel), an autonomous region of Portugal, is home to the only tea plantations in Europe. I was fortunate enough to be able to recently visit both of the tea plantations operating on the island.
The first one I visited was the Cha Gorreana (Pronounced Gore REE na) plantation. In operation since the last quarter of the 19th century, the factory looks much the same as it must have when it first opened and is complete with original equipment. There wasn’t so much a factory tour as visitors were free to roam pretty much anywhere they wanted in the factory. When one of the workers noticed my party was speaking in English, he dropped was he was doing and showed us all the process of the factory and how the tea was processed sorted and rolled. There was also a tasting room set up for all the tea produced. They came in four types: green, orange pekoe, pekoe and broken leaf. We were invited to try them all as much as we liked. The tea was very mellow, but had a very distinctive earthy flavor to it.
The second of two plantations was the Cha Porto Formoso plantation. Just a few miles west of the Gorreana factory, the Porto Formoso plantation was very different. Originally founded in the early twentieth century it closed in the 1980s and reopened in 1998. It offered a breath taking view of Sao Miguel’s north cost. There was a formal tour of the much smaller factory and tasting of the pekoe tea. They offered very similar teas to Gorreana but did not offer green tea.
On a whole, the teas in the Azores are very distinctive and virtual unknown in the United States. The Azores also offer a lot of experience for such a short trip (about 4½ hours from the US east coast) than any other tea plantations.
The Gorreana Web Site
http://www.gorreana.com/introe.htm
The Porto Formoso website
http://www.chaportoformoso.com/principal_ingles.php
A Few Pictures from the plantations
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mboyle522/ ... 500762942/
