"With its large silver pouch, artistic label and delicate leaves, Dalreoch Scottish white tea might be expected to grace elegant cups with saucers, perhaps with a scone served on the side. Instead, it is nestled with an array of numbered polythene packets in a room just off a laboratory at the University of Aberdeen. This is not an ordinary afternoon tea but evidence in a crime that science helped solve."
"For Prof David Burslem, a plant scientist at the university, the silver pouch was highly suspicious. It's a very large packet 250g and tea growing in Scotland was at a very small scale, he said. Burslem spent more than two decades in academia before finding himself in the role of an expert witness, helping to crack an audacious fraud that took in top hotels, leading politicians, tea growers across Scotland and swathes of the media."
Dalreoch Scottish white tea arrived in a large silver pouch and was stored alongside numbered polythene packets in a room off a University of Aberdeen laboratory. Plant scientist Prof David Burslem identified the unusually large 250g packet as suspicious because commercial tea production in Scotland was minimal. Burslem became an expert witness in an investigation that exposed a wide-ranging fraud that implicated top hotels, politicians, tea growers and the media. Tam O'Braan promoted Wee Tea, sold plants he claimed were cultivated in Scotland and advised growers, and secured high-profile publicity including a US launch attended by Nicola Sturgeon and Alan Cumming.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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