Visiting Bois Cheri Tea Factory

One of the highlights of our holiday to Mauritius was the tour Mauritius Your Way. Offered by Maurtourco, the idea was to choose the main sights on the island with a private guide. As well as the Pamplemousse Gardens and Sacred Lake, our guide Pravesh recommended visiting Bois Cheri Tea Factory. This included a tour of the site, as well as a tea-tasting experience.

Here is all you need to know to plan your journey to this memorable experience. After all, who doesn’t love drinking tea in the middle of paradise?

Tea Factory Tours

Bois Cheri is the largest tea producer in Mauritius. As such, their factory is quite big and is filled with the history and cultural importance of tea production.

We arrived early in the afternoon and began by going into the main reception. To walk around the factory, and to have a tea-tasting experience, was surprisingly cheap. In total, it came to no more than £20.00 for us both.

Seeing as you do not need a guided tour, Pravesh took us around. He started by showing us all of the tea leaves outside of the building. There was a gigantic pile of them that were being loaded up in bags on a winch-cable. We then followed them on their journey around the factory. They were dried, crushed and eventually sorted into large plastic bags. All of this was done by machines, with the exception of the loading and the placing of the final stickers. The staff were super friendly and encouraged us to take photographs and to ask questions.

Walking around the factory was not too difficult. There are a few open steps, so you need to be careful as you walk around. Equally, it is a working factory and so some areas are not accessible. I would say that I found the tea factory interesting, but without Pravesh it would have been difficult to understand all the processes.

Once we had seen the tea being loaded up, it was time to head into the museum. This is in a large room to the right of the reception and gives you a history of the place. It is really quite detailed and, in hindsight, I probably should have come to this part first.

Tea Tasting

Without doubt the best part of visiting Bois Cheri tea factory is the tasting. First off you drive down a dirt track to the pavilion. It is located on top of a hill, overlooking the plantation and a large lake. The drive is slow with all the bumps and turns, but keep an eye out for monkeys and wild pigs.

When you get to the pavilion, you are escorted to a table that overlooks the lake. There are all the tea and flavours you could ever wish for. Vanilla, exotic fruits, caramel, English breakfast… You name it. They also provide some authentic and tasty Mauritian biscuits, a factory we also visited on our trip.

We had enough hot water for three cups each, meaning we had to select our poison carefully. I opted for vanilla and Jack, ever the sweet tooth, went for caramel. Firstly, my vanilla was excellent. It had a subtle hint of vanilla that was not too overpowering. Jack’s also tasted very good, but was not very tea-like. It was a bit sweet for me, but he enjoyed it.

Next up, I went for a camomile and Jack went for the exotic fruits. As camomile tea goes, mine was very good. It was refreshing and tasty. Jack’s was a bit peculiar as it did not taste how you would imagine. I could see what they were getting at with exotic fruits, but it just wasn’t strong enough for either of us.

Lastly, we just had to try the traditional English breakfast. Like Mauritian tradition, we did not put milk in so that we could enjoy the flavour of the tea. I was actually very impressed with it and really enjoyed my drink.

The pavilion is in the perfect setting. We watched storm clouds come in from our vantage point and this made for a picturesque setting. Once the weather had somewhat subsided, we headed down to the lake. We saw a pig and her little piglets right by the shoreline and kept our eyes peeled for monkeys.

Final Thoughts

Visiting Bois Cheri tea factory really was an incredible experience. The factory itself was interesting, but you need somebody with you to appreciate it. I completely understand that it is an operational factory, so they cannot make it tourist-friendly. It is well worth a visit though as it is something completely different.

The gem though has to be the tea tasting site and the lake. It has to be in my top ten most picturesque locations I have visited. I also loved the experience of tasting different teas and eating authentic biscuits.

If you can get the chance, make sure that you come along. You do not need to pre-book; we just turned up on the day. For such a cheap price and an amazing location, you can’t go wrong.

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Visiting Bois Cheri Tea Factory