India’s tea-to-wine technology is in demand in Mozambique

New Delhi, Sep 16 (PTI) It was an attempt by a CSIRlaboratory to make wine from tea in order to avoid wastingover-grown tea leaves, but the technology is now in demand inMozambique where it will be replicated using local tea leaves. The Institute of Himalayan Bio-resource Technology(IHBT), a laboratory of the Council for Scientific andIndustrial Research (CSIR), has recently signed a MoU with acompany from Mozambique under which the technology will betransferred to the company. "The company, which is owned by a person of an Indianorigin, will make wine from tea found locally. Our scientistswill go to the African nation to set up machines," IHBTDirector Sanjay Kumar said. Improving tea production in Kangra region of HimachalPradesh and value addition to tea are the focus areas of IHBT. The tea produced in the Himalayan state is also known asKangra tea. Like the Darjeeling tea, Kangra tea is also famouswhole leaf orthodox tea available in the country. "Tea is a very labour intensive crop. The tender apicalbud and subtending two leaves are picked at the right stage bytrained pluckers and processed in the factories to give thefamous Kangra tea," Kumar said. He said, during the recent years, tea plantations arefaced with labour shortage due to which there is delay inplucking of tea shoots, thereby hampering the quality of theleaves. This delay of two-three days in plucking produces lesssucculent overgrown tea shoots severely affecting theprocessing of orthodox black teas, thus, lowering the teaquality and severely affects the economy of the teaplantations, he said. "To overcome the problem of un-remunerative low grademade teas, the Institute has come up with value addition ofthese teas by processing them into tea wines," Kumar said. He said the institute has further made wines using teawith local fruits/berries having health benefiting properties. "In our technology portfolio we have tea wines (from onlytea) and tea herbal wines (tea with local fruits). The winestake a little more than a year for processing. The wines canbe made sweet or dry on demand. The alcohol content can alsobe varied," Kumar said. PTI PRSMN