I know I’ve told this story on the internet before, but perhaps not at BB.
I spent some time in Sri Lanka when I was younger, and at one point went to a tea plantation (where I was the only non-Sri Lankan, so conversations were spoken in Sinhalese and translated for my benefit by a close friend). They showed us the screens where the tea was sorted. The top screen had the largest wire weave; any tea leaves caught in it were sold to premium companies. The screens decreased in weave as you went down, as did the prestige of the companies which bought that level of tea leaf, until you got to the bottom (about 7 or 8 screens down), which allowed only tea dust to land on the floor. We were told that was swept up and included in the last screen’s offerings, and was sold only to Lipton because no one else would take it.
We were not wealthy or inspectors or even interested in buying tea, just friends giving a tour of their workplace to other friends, so while there might have been some exaggeration about the dust on the floor, there was no reason to doubt that the last screen, filled with near-dust, was for Lipton alone. Honestly, it LOOKED like the tea in a Lipton tea bag.
