Where can one get a decent cup of tea?
Trip Start
Jan 30, 2007
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77
814
Trip End
Dec 31, 2011
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London,
England,
United Kingdom
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Well, maybe it is strange, but then Tibetans drink black tea - in yak butter tea - but don't grow the stuff. It has to be brought in from south China.
You don't often get to meet the folks behind their tea, but a few years ago I had the honour of meeting the founder of the Dilmah tea company, Merrill J. Fernando, and his son. And what nice people they were too.
We chatted over numerous cups of tea about how it is grown, and how it is consumed around the world. Rather than being sold off as a comodity for auction in Europe and then blending, the Fernandos harvest and then process their own tea, meaning it is fresher.
Here are some pics of them, in Wellington, NZ. http://picasaweb.google.com/keithalyons/DilmahTea
And here's some info about how their tea is grown:
Most tea gardens are located on the island's central hills. The best gardens are, as always, found at the higher altitudes, from three thousand to seven thousand feet on the eastern and western slopes of the high plateaus. Depending on the direction in which they face, the gardens are influenced by one of two monsoons; on the eastern slopes, the finest tea is plucked from late June to the end of August, whereas on the western slopes the best harvesting takes place from February 1st to March 15th.
It is now midday at Dimbula or Uva Highlands, Devonia or perhaps Pettiagalla. Women in saris wear a long white cloth on their head to protect their shoulders from the sun.
the man and the leaf
Their graceful and fragile silhouettes, slightly stooped, blend well with the tall tea plants left to grow like trees every thirty feet or so to provide a little shade and mark out the plots. Here and there, men dressed all in white - turban, jacket and long skirt down to their ankles - supervise the plucking. And when the baskets are full, they follow the pluckers to the door of the factory, where the tea is weighed. This tea factory in Ceylon, a long white building occupying the end of a small valley, looks somewhat like an Alpine sanatorium mistakenly set in the tropics. Although the soul of a garden resides in the hands of the pluckers, the factory represents both its heart and brain.The freshly picked leaves undergo a long process of transformation, for black tea must be fermented. And the fermentation of tea requires as much care and close, scientifically controlled attention similar to the fermentation of wine. This industrial art constitutes the modern, technological face of these exotic and apparently unchanging tea gardens, and merits the same detailed description as the colourful swirl of saris. But whereas it is pleasant to linger under a shade tree to watch the plucking, ears lightly humming with the music of wind in leaves or the voices and murmured songs of the pickers, once at the door of the factory it becomes impossible to tarry for long - much less day dream- in the thundering din of machines.
Here, men do most of the work. Barefoot labourers and technicians in British-style shorts bustle among an indescribable clutter of machines, amid dim shade, heat and incessant noise.
Everywhere it is produced, black tea undergoes five successive stages. The leaves are first softened by a withering process that reduces their moisture content by half and enables them to be rolled breaking. They are spread in thin layers on wide screens stacked eight inches apart to allow a current of warm air to circulate for roughly twenty-four hours. The most modern factories now accomplish the task in tunnels or vats reducing withering time to six hours. Withering is followed by rolling (or maceration). The leaves are rolled to break down cell walls and release their essential oils. This was once done in the palm of the hand, but has long since been performed by rolling machines composed of heavy metal disks rotating in opposite directions.
The rolled leaves are then placed on long mats to be sorted according to size and condition - whole or broken. This sorting is still done entirely by hand in some gardens, enabling the leaves to be "graded" into various classes of black tea. In the finest gardens, whole leaves are classified according to size and the way in which they are rolled, yielding Orange Pekoe (O.P. leaves rolled lengthwise and measuring from eight to fifteen millimeters). Flowery orange Pekoe (F.O.P. leaves rolled in the same way yet smaller, from five to eight millimeters). Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (G.F.O.P. and F.O.P. in which certain leaves have a golden tip). or Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe (T.G.F.O.P., all tips are golden). Leaves that have been broken, deliberately or not yield high-quality grades of Broken Orange Pekoe (B.O.P.) Golden Broken Orange Pekoe (G.B.O.P.) or Tippy Golden Broken Orange Pekoe (T.G.B.O.P.). Finally the so called "crushed" leaves which are in fact small pieces, are called Dust (less than one millimeter) and Fannings (one and a half millimeters).
Next comes fermentation, the crucial operation that endows black tea with its color and, above all, the Subtlety of its flavor. Experts agree that the process remains something of a mystery. No one knows exactly what alchemy produces the flavors, for certain cellular reactions during fermentation have never been fully understood or even identified. We do know that fermentation is produced by exposing leaves to a highly moist atmosphere (at least 90 percent humidity) after having been spread on broad labs of cement, glass or aluminum. The air temperature must be carefully monitored and controlled (between 72 degrees and 82 degrees F), because a slight rise in temperature will give the tea a burned taste, whereas a slight drop will halt fermentation. When maintained at constant temperature and humidity, the leaf first heats up from the effect of several chemical reactions, then begins to cool off. A tea-maker's skill includes an adept sense of timing - for best results, fermentation should be halted just when the leaf stop heating, which may take from one to three hours.
The leaves are then dried in an enormous machine comprising a dryer and conveyor belt, exposing them to a temperature of at least 175 degrees F for roughly twenty minutes. Drying, the last stage of transformation, also requires well-hone skills. If it is too brief, the tea many become moldy in time; too long, and the tea will lose much of its flavor. All this expertise goes into the black tea that emerges from the greatest tea gardens in the world.
