The guide was nice, explained to us how each of the machine works, but none of them were actually on, so there was really nothing to see. They’ll talk to you for about 10 minutes and then send you to sit and wait for the tasting of different tea. You’ll get a spoon and 8 cups of tea. Then you’re expected to buy something. Whenever a tourist comes, they’ll tell you some random high price to pay but DON’T. They told us golden white tea is 20.000Rs (for 100 g), when we wanted only 50 g, they said 12.000 Rs. We told them it’s too expesinve, not knowing they can put the price down and left with 50 g for 6.000 Rs (which is still pretty expensive i think). The family next to us was offered like 4 differents packs of tea for 15.000 Rs. It wasn’t bad, the experience was nice, it’s just a tourist trap and I think you can find way better factories in Sri Lanka. I would also like to see the plantations or the process of making tea, but none of that you can see here.

We were dropped there by our driver during our transfer. We got a free tour which was pretty interesting. We were warmly welcomed and after the tour we were offered different sorts of teas to try. Then we could buy teas to take home. At this point we realized it was a tourist trap. One 100g bag of tea cost 15000 LKR. When we told the price was a little too high the lady got colder. Finally we decided to buy the tea. But it was definitely overpriced and not worth the money. After we made our purchase the guys between us didn’t agree for the price and they were sold exactly the same tea for much lower prices. The tour was a nice experience but and the and they will try to rip you off.

Nice welcome on arrival. Interesting tour of the factory and brief demonstration of each machine. Good description and sampling of the various teas (black and white and green) that they produce and then an 8 cup sampling session which was good. However then they started with the hard sell, offering us numerous teas, in a variety of sizes/combination packs, with ( as we later realised) exorbitant prices. Admittedly one tea offered was a fine white tea, but they tried to get £50 for 50g from us. We managed to haggle them down to £15, which is more in line with what you’ll pay in all the other team factories. Following day we went to Pedro which was a better tour, with better priced tea, you could see the tea plantations and the pickers, and added benefit of then walking to the Lovers Leap waterfall which was beautiful. Stonegate is ok, but there are better tea factories.

As the Tour was free, I shoulden‘t have anything to Compilation. BUT.. After you are rushed through the old factory, that actually holds beautiful old machines, and after you get to try different tea blends, which were quite interesting too, you get pressured to buy their overpriced products. Classic tourist trap, give you a ,free tour’, then make you feel bad if you don’t buy super expensive stuff. If you feel confident haggling for a good price, check it out! Don’t get pressured into spending 70$ for 150g of tea tho.

I recently visited the tea shop on Nuwaraeliya road, Gampola as part of an organised tour with Tour Radar/Mango Vacations. Whilst I enjoyed the tour of the factory and tasting the teas, I believe I have been missold product from the store. The white tea and “magic midnight” tea does not taste like the tea that was part of the tea tasting. To get any taste/flavour you definitely need to use more than 5-6 leaves as advised, and even when using a significant amount more and letting the tea brew as per the instructions on the packaging, the tea does not have the supposedly “natural sweet” taste like the samples tasted in store. I wonder whether they added sweetener to the samples for tasting to encourage us to purchase? Similarly, the Magic Midnight tea does not have the strong flavour as the tea sampled in the store, despite following the instructions on the packaging. I've tried to contact the store with no luck as their email addresses do not work. What a waste of money. Luckily I did not purchase these products as gifts.