"I come from the world of aromatic and medicinal plants"Marie-Louise Grognet launched into cult

A fashion phenomenon or an agricultural sector of the future, tea growing is attracting more and more candidates in the west of France. The Armor de Thé association brings together 13 producers in Brittany, including Marie-Louise based in Loire-Atlantique, a few kilometers from the Breton administrative border.

“I come from the world of aromatic and medicinal plants”specifies Marie-Louise Grognet, who is very interested in the molecular composition of plants.

“With each transformation of tea leaves, you have chemical processes which play out with potential on health which are very interesting”. She talks about her new job as a tea grower with passion.

And when we tell her that it can be quite counterintuitive to embark on this type of culture far from Asia, Marie-Louise responds straight away: “But the tea plant requires growing conditions that can be quite close to the conditions we have here. It likes acidic soils and it likes soils that “dry” well. This means that when it rains a lot in winter, the tea plant must not have its roots in water for several weeks.”.

After a first wave of Breton pioneers at the start of the 2000s and a second around 2010, Marie-Louise is part of a 3rd generation of tea adventurers in France. She also cites two other regions affected by this culture: Normandy and the Basque Country.

A resident of Faye-de-Bretagne since 2021, she developed a passion for tea culture after an internship with Thomas Bernardi, one of the local figures in tea growing, based like her between Nantes and Rennes. While she is engaged in agricultural training during the 2023-2024 season, she is doing her internships with him.

“It was really the first tea transformation with Thomas that gave me the spark.” She discovers the richness of the transformation of the plant and sees that each recipe can have different possible variations.

Marie-Louise has just made her first harvest at the end of April, a few weeks before her 37th birthday. “The first picking is for white tea, the following ones in June will be for green tea”. Today it has 1,500 plants planted. His project is to reach 10,000 tea bushes.

Tea grows on French soil but can we make a living from it? Here again, Marie-Louise’s response is not long in coming: “We have not yet proven that it is possible today in France to live 100% from the sale of tea. Many of us either keep part of our old activity or carry out agricultural diversification”.

The sector is developing but this new arrival in tea remains realistic and extremely prudent from an economic point of view. To get started, “we are talking on average of 50,000 euros of investments per hectare”.

It is an average figure to be nuanced according to her according to the choices of each tea grower in relation to the purchase or production on site of plants, the implementation or not of irrigation, protection or not of crops. But what is certain is that the return on investment will take several years.

“To give you an idea, we can start harvesting from a tea plant that is at least 3 years old and we consider it fully mature from 6 years old“. Marie-Louise has chosen to increase her initial investment to be able to install already old plants and thus harvest this year.

“It’s a tea that we’ll enjoy just like we enjoy a good bottle of wine from time to time.” Marie-Louise recognizes that her production is not intended to compete with teas for daily consumption.

The outlets are primarily focused on direct sales during events such as the Rennes Tea Festival in May or the Paris Tea Festival (June 13 and 14, 2026).

And when we approach the delicate question of price, she doesn’t shy away and immediately shows the color: “In organic stores, you will find teas between 80 and 200 euros per kilo for teas imported from Asia. For French tea, it is around 1,000 to 1,5,000 euros per kilo”.

She recognizes it herself, “It seems enormous but it is justified.” She mentions the price of labor, the charges. She also adds that there, the sector is very old, very structured, the crops are well established with mechanization of the harvest which has been able to be put in place.

On the contrary, in France, the plantations are young, the harvest is manual and the yield per hour is very low. All of this is reflected in the price. Consume French tea, “It requires a certain budget but it’s also a commitment, it’s supporting a sector in full development”.

How much does it cost to drink a cup of French tea? Marie-Louise plays the game of a question that a tea lover might ask but who fears that the bill will be very steep.

“Generally, we sell 10 gram sachets for around 10 euros”. Even without scientific background, we easily arrive at the following result: 1 gram for 1 euro. “We’ll say that we use 3 grams of tea for a cup”. There, a small multiplication at the primary level gives us a price of 3 euros per cup.

Yes but, “These are teas that can be infused 3 to 4 times.” So, a small division of our 3 euros by 4 which brings us to 0.75 euros per cup.

A final effort to calculate on the basis of the teas mentioned above and sold in organic stores. We arrive at a range between 0.24 and 0.60 euros.

For those who would like to try French tea, you must prepare to invest a few additional euros with the assurance, according to Marie-Louise, that the multiplication of infusions for the same portion of tea will not lead to a reduction in quality, quite the contrary. “There is a real subtlety, each infusion reveals other aromas.”

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