Tea growers Victor Vesely and Margit Nellemann are the personification of the slow food movement in Vancouver Island’s stunning Cowichan Valley, 45 minutes north of Victoria and known to foodies for its vineyards, organic farms and a herd of Bulgarian water buffalo.

“There’s no food slower than tea,” says Vesely, 48. He and his partner, Nellemann, a 51-year-old ceramic artist, planted their first 200 tea plants, a Chinese strain they obtained from U.S. nurseries, in May 2010. In May or June 2015, when the roots of those plants have gone down more than a metre on their south-facing slope, they’ll harvest and market the first Cowichan tea from the top leaves of their now-bushy, dark green Camellia sinensis plants. Its flavour, like a fine wine, will capture the essence of their land, its terroir.

Teafarm is Canada’s only tea plantation, thriving now with an additional 400 seedlings in defiance of an Agriculture Canada pronouncement that tea, mostly the product of tropical and subtropical regions, cannot be grown in this country.

Vesely and Nellemann have never covered their plants, and they have lost only one seedling in the course of their five-year experiment.

The extremes of temperature in their valley, from winter lows that can plunge to -15 C to summer highs of 39 C are good for developing flavour. A tea expert in Darjeeling, India, told them in a tweet that the more you stress your plants, the more intense the taste of the brew.

In the meantime, Teafarm has been selling a range of 30 artfully blended teas and herbal infusions, combining tea leaves imported mainly from India with organic ingredients including lavender that they grow on their 11-acre farm.

Bestsellers include Cowichan Caravan, a black tea combining Assam, Ceylon, keemun, oolong and lapsang souchong tea leaves with lavender, and Mysteaque, a soothing herbal mix of peppermint, lemon grass, licorice root and calendula.

And with the first leaves plucked from their plants, they are finding new culinary uses for tea and have made their own “matcha” powder from it to flavour a delicate chocolate cake.

A long green shed below the tea terraces serves as a shop and a gallery and studio for Danish-born Nellemann’s fanciful ceramics. Her hand-built, uniquely etched and glazed teapots, plates and cups are featured in tea services at the farm and at outdoor events such as this summer’s Moroccan tea party.

“We began with a vision to combine our passion for tea and clay, to provide space for Margit to create and to design a lifestyle around connecting people to nature,” says Vesely, a former communications specialist for a Vancouver environmental organization.

The couple knew they’d landed in the right place when they found their low-lying land, which they learned had been cleared by Chinese migrant workers in the late 19th century.

“Somehow tea just wants to be grown here,” he adds. It’s entirely possible that the Chinese migrants for whom tea was so central a part of their lifestyle did in fact grow their own tea on the same land.”

Emphasizing how much their operation is a grand experiment, the genial Nellemann and Vesely have a unique philosophy. “We are replicating the thousands of years’ history of tea and clay and china,” says Vesely, noting that what they are selling is not so much a product as an experience.

“It’s our creative expression of what we feel is important, to slow people down, to connect with nature, to focus on art and tea.”

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