Rothschild Estate - visitable Ceylon tea factory

In the tea region of Nuwara Eliya there are several tea factories that can be visited. Rothschild Tea Estate is one of them. The estate is now run by Damro Tea, just like the Labookellie estate further uphill. The latter is the largest tea plantation in Sri Lanka. But covering 800 hectares and growing over 30 million pounds of tea annually, Rothschild Estate is almost of the same size as Labookellie and by far the largest plantation in the area of Pussellawa, which is famous for high-quality mid-grown teas in altitudes around 1000 m above sea level.

withering to reduce moisture by half

packed graded teas in the showroom

fermenting, drying, sorting

Rothschild Tea centre at A5 highway

As Rothschild is one of the most modern and cleanest tea factories in Sri Lanka, a visit is higly recommandable particularly for those travelers who cannot stand a lot of dust. It's also less noisy than other tea factories. Visits are free of charge.

Rothschild Tea Estate near Pussellawa is located at the famous A5 mountain road, The tea centre for tea tasting and shopping is 38 km (24 miles) south of Kandy and 36 km (22 miles) northwest of Nuwara Eliya. The Rothschild Tea centre is located directly at the A5 road. The new Rothschild Tea factory is only 200 m (600 feet) below the tea centre.

 The illustrous name "Rothschild" indeed refers to the name of the family that run the world's largest bank in the 19th century, based in Frankfurt, Vienna, Paris, and London. The name is derived from the Jewish family's house of origin in Frankfurt and recorded already in the 16th century. The founders of the plantation in Sri Lanka were a branch of the family, but their own name was de Worms. They named their plantatation after their grandfather, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founder of the banking dynasty and father of the famous Rothschild Brothers Salomon Rothschild, the banker of the Habsburg Dynasty, and Nathan Mayer Rothschild, who established N.M. Rothschild & Sons in London.

Thus, the Worms brothers in then Ceylon were their nephews. Gabriel (1801-1888) and Moritz (aka Maurice, 1805-1867) Worms started at the London stock exchange. But in 1841 Moritz settled down near Pusselawa and sent for his elder brother to follow him. (A foundation stone found in 1992, however, gives the date 1839.) The Worms brothers soon established the most lucrative coffee plantations on the island. Long before James Taylor founded the first larger tea plantation in Ceylon, Maurice de Worms brought tea cuttings from China to the island to be tested in a small garden at Condegalle. But Rothschild Estate remained to be mainly a coffee plantation till the retirement of the de Worms brothers. Only after the great coffee blight in 1869, the plantationa around Pussellawa were replanted with tea.