The Bayleaf’s Wine & Tea Room, designed for an elegant and exclusive experience, was opened on Wednesday – just in time for the festive season!

The room offers 24 varieties of wine, over 50 flavours of tea, a high tea menu, and an all-new Western style main menu with an Italian touch focusing especially on meats.

Here, one is able to indulge in a winery-style tasting or enjoy gourmet cuisine and by-the-glass sips. The classical setting features just one large table for 12, ensuring intimacy and cosy excellence.

The ceiling-high chillers feature a wine range from internationally-recognised wineries, chilled to perfection. It features old world French and Italian wines and an excellent selection of new world Australian, South African, Chilean and Argentinean wines – ensuring satisfaction.

The gourmet menu offers an authentic cold cut platter, an Italian cheese platter and antipasti as starters. The main menu offers Australian beef tenderloin, lamb cutlets, salmon and duck presented on slate plates and served with special accompaniments. The desserts are to die for with truly Italian pan forte, tiramisu, semifreddo and zabaglione, guaranteed to satisfy all dessert desires.

The tea specials are by TEAELI, Sri Lanka’s first designer tea brand by Ceylon Leaf & Spice Company. With a promise to use only ‘Single Estate’ teas, it features some of the finest pure (non-flavoured) teas of Ceylon, including rare hand-made teas.

The high tea menu features elegant finger sandwiches, scones and a delectable sweet selection with options for the sweet-toothed to enjoy a choice of three to seven items to share. High tea is served for a minimum of three people and a maximum of 10 from 2 to 6 p.m.

Advance notice of 24 hours is required to book the Wine & Tea Room, while reservations should be made a day ahead for the high tea experience as well.

Set in the tradition of famous wine and tea room concepts the world over, the new offering at The Bayleaf is a long-held dream for Managing Director Harpo Gooneratne.

Speaking about the launch, Harpo said: “This has been my vision, to one day feature a specialty wine room serving gourmet food paired with fine wines and it’s that much more to offer artisan teas by TEAELI. It gives me great pleasure to launch this concept at my signature restaurant, The Bayleaf.”

“We are serving good wine and good meats, so why tea? I thought to myself, being in Sri Lanka, which is known for its tea, we should offer special teas here. TEAELI has some great blends and I wanted to introduce the high tea aspect at The Bayleaf as well. It’s all about doing something different in a great, beautiful and cosy venue. Corporates are always looking for venues of this nature, which provide a unique experience,” he told Daily FT. Given the great mix of offerings, the Wine & Tea Room at The Bayleaf will certainly become a highly-sought-after venue to enjoy high-end wines, gourmet cuisine and exquisite teas in a beautiful setting.

For more information, contact the manager on 2695920 or see www.bayleafcolombo.com. 

Pix by Damith Wickramasinghe

Heavenly high tea!

The savoury food items on the high tea menu at the Wine & Tea Room are cucumber and cream cheese with white bread, baguette with Milano Salami with sweet cheese and garlic herb mayonnaise, smoked salmon and cream cheese éclair, chicken, avocado with lime mayonnaise and foccacia filled with mozzarella and sundried tomato and pesto. 

On the sweet side, there’s homemade scones with Cornish clotted cream and fresh jam, mini brownies with chocolate sauce, blueberry pannacotta, tiramisu served in an espresso cup, a sponge slice and a chocolate cake bite. 

These will be completed with the finest TEAELI teas from Ceylon Leaf & Spice Company.

Tantalising teas by TEAELI

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Sri Lanka’s first designer tea brand TEAELI’s specialty is in artisan tea making, where the teas are blended with real herbs, spices, fruits, nuts and chocolate.

Asked to list three must-have teas from the extensive selection on offer at the Wine & Tea Room, Ceylon Leaf & Spice Company Chairman Dushyantha De Silva picked Chillie Chocolate, Almond Truffle and Pink.

“The Chillie Chocolate tea is literally like a melting chillie chocolate in your mouth. Almond Truffle is Christmas in a cup! It’s very smooth and you taste all the components; the main focus is on taste. Pink is a green tea with jasmine and freeze-dried pieces of strawberry,” he told Daily FT.

TEAELI offers tea solutions to food service businesses of all types, with a large range of teas available in various formats including pyramid tea bags, pot tea bag and loose tea blends. With industry leading standards of flavour and freshness, purpose designed products restaurants and hotel rooms, TEAELI teas provide luxury and exceptional value to the food service segment.

De Silva’s goal for TEAELI is simple – to connect tea lovers everywhere with the highest quality product from his home country, one tasteful sip at a time.