Deciphering Nature: Dilmah Teas with Dilhan Fernando
Tea has quietly become one of the clearest signals of where wellness culture is heading, and Dilmah has spent forty years proving that an ethical, family-run business creating a superior product is a recipe for success.
Dilhan Fernando returns to Sensing Up as Chairman and CEO of Dilmah, the Ceylon tea house his father, Merrill J. Fernando, built from a single conviction that tea should carry the name of its origin rather than disappear into a blend. Dilhan still walks the gardens and picks the leaf himself, understands the biochemistry behind a bright cup as fluently as the ceremony of drinking one, and holds an adjunct professorship in sustainability at Edith Cowan University alongside his role at the company.
Underneath all of it sits a working philosophy Dilhan returns to more than once: value has to be created for people and for nature before a business has earned the right to create it for itself. Anything else, he says plainly, is parasitic. It is a hard line to hold in an industry built on margin, and rarer still to hear a CEO say it out loud.
The tasting brought the two crafts together properly. Valérie poured Dilmah's Paradise Breakfast, a Ceylon black tea lifted with real turmeric, Ceylon cinnamon, ginger and a whisper of pepper, alongside a wedge of Reypenaer XO, a Gouda aged three years in Amsterdam until it turns to caramel, cognac and walnut. The spice in the tea met the cheese's sweetness somewhere in the middle, and what followed was less a pairing than a small proof of Dilhan's own argument, that when something is grown and made with attention, it doesn't need to compete with what sits beside it.
Dilmah is a family-run Ceylon tea house specialising in single-origin tea, founded by Merrill J. Fernando and now led by his son, Dilhan. Tea in this episode:
- Paradise Breakfast: Ceylon black tea with turmeric, cinnamon and ginger https://shop.dilmahtea.com.au/collections/wellness/products/dilmah-paradise-breakfast-ceylon-black-tea-with-turmeric-ceylon-cinnamon-ginger-40-tea-bags
Paired with Reypenaer XO, 36-month aged Gouda https://smellycheese.co/products/reypenaer-xo-36-months
Valérie Henbest is a French-Australian cheese specialist born in Normandie. Imports 10+ tonnes of French cheese monthly, sells at Smelly Cheese Shop, Adelaide Central Market. French National Order of Agricultural Merit 2023. Inducted into Guilde Internationale des Fromagers, Paris.
Sensing Up is a space to slow down, pay attention and let the senses lead.
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