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Aug 11 (LBO) – A top UK department store says it is expanding its selection of up market Ceylon Teas by introducing more custom made designer teas to tempt the palate of its customers. A soon to be introduced Harrods ‘Eagle Nest’ tea is manually hand rolled to exacting specifications of the posh Knightsbridge department store. “You will not get this tea anywhere else in Sri Lanka, India or any other part of the world,” says Hazifur Rahman Tea and Coffee consultant for Harrods. “The leaves are plucked by an experienced plucker and hand rolled. This is time-consuming very difficult to produce, so you can only produce about 30 kilos a year.” The limited edition designer tea will sell in packs of 100 grams at a price yet to be decided. Rahman has been buying tea for Harrods for 30 years and has just retired to become a consultant. The tea will be custom made by Sri Lanka’s Stassen’s Group, a diversified business group with roots in tea. Harrods itself was established in 1849 by Charles Henry Harrods as a small grocery shop specializing in tea. At present Harrods sells a range of specialist teas including unblended Ceylon Teas under their own ‘garden mark’, which is the individual brand of a tea estate. Unlike blended teas, where different types of tea is mixed to arrive at a standard taste, the tang of a garden mark can vary from one production batch to the next, with optimum being reached during the drier ‘quality season’ of a given producing area. The temperature and humidity of the day can affect the fermentation process of orthodox tea manufacture and cause subtle changes to the flavour from one day to the next challenging the skill of tea makers. Last year Harrods bought 50,000 kilograms of...