In no time, you'€™ll realize that we'€™ve been managing our tea farms all wrong.

'€œFive-star hotels in Indonesia do not serve Indonesian tea. We can only find English tea, French tea or others. Where is our Indonesian tea?'€ said the promotions head of the Indonesia Tea Council, which provides advice for the country'€™s tea industry in coordination with the Agriculture Ministry.

Indonesian tea, she said, was also vanishing from high-end cafes abroad.

'€œThere'€™s this café in Paris that serves tea as their main beverage. Several years ago they still served the best kinds of Indonesian tea,'€ she says.

'€œBut now they only sell one or two kinds and sometimes we even can'€™t find Indonesian tea on the menu. Vietnamese and Bangladeshi teas are on the menu and there are plenty of those kinds,'€ said the 36-year-old.

She said Indonesia is the world'€™s eighth-largest tea producer, with Vietnam the sixth and Kenya fourth.

Kenya'€™s tea history, she said, can be traced to Indonesia. During Dutch rule in Indonesia, Indonesian tea leaves were taken to Kenya to be grown there.

She said many Indonesian tea producers sold 80 percent of their high-quality teas to the overseas market, raising her suspicions that most high-quality and expensive tea people bought overseas actually came from Indonesia.

Ratna was first introduced to tea as a child by her mother but her passion for it grew after going to cooking school in Australia, where she became fascinated by the different tea variants available there.

Not long after, tea became her true passion. She set up a tea community and co-authored a book titled Kisah dan Khasiat Tea (Tea Stories and Benefits).

For her love of tea, she travels to many countries '€” learning about tea straight from tea masters in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Kuala Lumpur and more.

She also gives talks to raise awareness on how valuable Indonesian tea is.

'€œEven our government doesn'€™t see tea as a profitable commodity so they give it little attention,'€ she says, adding that tea only contributed around Rp 2 trillion a year.

'€œTea is not a priority. The government has others important things on its agenda.'€

The sad reality, however, is not making her give up trying.

Ratna said she could accept the fact that Indonesia was not a top wine producer since there were not many grape farms in the country, but tea was a totally different case.

'€œIf we can'€™t or we don'€™t have it, then we should not bother with it. But the fact is that we can grow tea on our land and we have the perfect weather to do so,'€ she says.

'€œWe also have many kinds of tea, the best. So there is no reason why Indonesian can'€™t be a world-class tea producer.'€

She said tea farms provided many jobs and attracted tourists.

But currently, even government-owned tea plantations are suffering from financial loses as production costs are higher than profits.

Private tea producers, she said, were seeing profits but likely due to the fact that they market their high-quality teas overseas with their own efforts, from promoting their teas at international exhibitions to dealing with overseas buyers.

'€œTo establish a domestic market for high-quality teas, we need more effort. We should work together.'€

For her love of tea, she is willing to go the extra mile -- her involvement with the tea council is voluntary.

'€œThe state of our tea industry needs extra attention. We can'€™t just wait around. We really need to promote Indonesian teas so that our society can appreciate our own tea,'€ said Ratna, who earns a living as a business consultant.

'€œI dream that someday we will have high-quality tea brand that is produced in Indonesia. I dream that demand for tea in the country rises very high.'€

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