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29 SEPTEMBER 2021
Tea plucking...
You can't make good tea from a bad leaf, but you can make bad tea from a good leaf.
To put it another way, if you’ve not got quality raw material, in our case a quality leaf, making a good tea is out of the question. By extension, tea plucking is perhaps the single most important stage in tea processing.
How are the leaves gathered?
In most parts of the world, the most typical examples being India and Sri Lanka, tea plucking is still carried out by hand. This is exhausting and time-consuming work, which is done to make high quality tea, where uniformity and quality in the plucking play a crucial role in the final product.
The action, an art in itself. Speed, accuracy, absorption is what’s required. The pluckers, the overwhelming majority women, take the twig between the thumb and the index finger, and with a sudden twist of the wrist downwards, snap off a bunch of leaves and throw it into the basket balanced on their heads. The movement must be made as swiftly as possible so as not to damage the leaves.
On the other hand, machine/mechanical picking, extremely popular in Kenya and Japan, is obviously much faster, gives a larger yield and reduces the production cost. Its disadvantage is a compromise over leaf quality since the machine cannot discern the good from the bad leaf and cannot cut selectively. This means that the mechanically-plucked leaf is used in most cases, though not exclusively, for producing lower-grade tea. This applies in the case of Kenya, where virtually all its tea production is destined for the teabag. By contrast, in Japan, though harvesting is carried out mechanically, the superior technology and know-how of the Japanese permits the production of excellent quality teas through the full use of all parts of the leaves and without there being any compromise on quality.
The harvests
Determining when, how and what part of the plant will be picked during harvesting season entails numerous, multidimensional and interconnected factors. Area, soil, altitude, micro-climate, weather conditions, cultivation methods used, as well as variety and specifications of the tea to be made all affect the harvesting.
As regards the time, for example. In mountainous regions where tea trees grow more slowly due to the cold, spring harvesting can start many weeks later compared with spring harvesting in lowland regions with a milder climate. Likewise, in tropical regions where the plants don't go into winter hibernation, such as in Kenya and Assam, the harvest takes place all year round.
As for the type of tea to be made, though in general the young, tender leaves are the ones that are plucked, the specific variety to be made will determine the precise style of gathering to be followed by the pickers. For instance, to make Yin Zhen, only the tips are picked, that is to say, the unopened leaf buds. Contrastingly, for oolong, the leaves must have fully opened, and indeed very often the buds and the next three or four leaves are plucked.
Different tea varieties can even bring out their quality in different seasons. The best Chinese green teas, for instance, are the first from spring and stand out for their freshness and aromas, the sweetness and sense of rejuvenation they bring to all who drink them. An Assam from the summer picking is at the peak of its aromas then, while an autumn Tie Guan Yin is more fragrant than one plucked in spring.
Harvesting when only the bud and top leaf are selected is called imperial plucking. Next comes the fine plucking where the bud and the two next leaves are selected. Finally, there is coarse plucking entailing the bud and three or four tea leaves
Around 5 kilos of fresh leaves or 15,000 buds are needed to make 1 kilo of instant tea. The same action repeated thousands of times by the plucker is needed to produce the tea that reaches us.
Let's ‘raise’ a cup to these people the next time we sip our tea.
