Forget green tea, new craze is purple

Chesumot limited managing director, Kim Martins at the expansive farm under purple tea [PHOTO/STANDARD]

Across the picturesque highlands of Kenya’s great Rift Valley, fields of tea shimmer in shades of emerald, lime and moss under the equatorial sky.

Some of these fields though, are now darkened with patches of purple. The purple comes from leaves with high levels of anthocyanins, natural pigments that also give cranberries, blueberries and grapes their colour.