White car parked near white house

São Miguel - Coimbra - Portugal

Located on the island of São Miguel, in the Azores archipelago, Gorreana is the oldest, and currently the only, tea plantation in Europe. Internationally recognized as a first-class tea producer, Gorreana has been, since 1883, a family business that began when Ermelinda Gago da Câmara and her son José Honorato opened the factory and sold the first production of tea under the Gorreana seal. Planted hundreds of kilometers away from industrial pollution in the vast mountains of the lush Gorreana estate without the use of any herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, dyes or preservatives and harvested between April and September, Gorreana's tea (black and green) is effectively a 100% organic product since due to the fact that the normal pests of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis) do not survive in the island's climate, Gorreana does not feel the need to use any chemicals in its plantations. The result is an entire legacy of 130 years of cultivation and marketing of top quality teas, handpicked and chemical-free, which deserve the international recognition that Gorreana teas have, being the most appreciated in Europe since the time when art of growing tea was introduced in the Azores by two Chinese specialists in September 1874. In 2012, Bertha Meireles-Hintze, the matriarch of the family, was awarded the Medal of Merit in São Miguel for her commitment to maintaining Gorreana as a family business since the beginning of its activity in the 18th century. Visited annually by thousands of people, Gorreana as a plantation, factory and museum, is the idyllic place to enjoy a cup of tea while admiring the original Marshall machines dating from 1840 still in operation at the factory. The scent of fresh tea and the flowers that surround the property associated with the breathtaking view of the blue sea and the intoxicating green of the mountains constitutes an authentic paradise as peculiar as the tea from our plantations which owes its unique characteristics to our climate, to the PH from the clayey, acidic and mineral-rich soil and, of course, to the sea breeze that falls on the plantations and artisanal cultivation methods. These are essentially the reasons why the only place where tea has been produced in Europe for more than a century is here in the Gorreana plantations on the intoxicating island of São Miguel. Currently, Gorreana's plantations cover an area of ​​32 hectares, from which about 33 tons of tea are produced per year in the black and green varieties. A small part of the production is destined for the Azorean market and the rest is exported to many countries such as mainland Portugal, Germany, USA, Canada, Austria, France, Italy, Brazil, Angola, Japan, among many other countries that value above all the quality and uniqueness of Gorreana teas.