Kettles tea - Tea Grades-Kinds-Varieties: Start Learning All About Tea!
TEA PLANTATION IS A LOVELY PLACE TO VISIT!
TEA PLANTATION is a nice place to visit. Look at the bounty of nature. Have a view of the estates from a few hundred meters above in the sky. Wonder at the natural landscape being manipulated by man for his convenience.
The smooth undulating hill is seemed to be covered with green woolen blanket just to protect itself from the cold weather. See also a few trees other than the shade giving silver oaks, looking beautiful with their own canopy.
You can see the clouds spreading above the tea gardens and a few small waterfalls turning into streams. They fall down and run here and there in between the blocks of the estates and go down to mix with the river far off in the plains.
SILVER SHINE OF TEA FACTORY!
Look at the tea factories located on the hill tops; their metallic tops are shining in the sunlight; they leave smoke in the sky demonstrating that they are active in the production of raw teas.
When you admire with the birds eye view of the plantation, come down and drive in a jeep and see the estates at a closer look. The tea plants are not really short bushes, but tall growing trees kept pruned. They are grown to a short height of about 4 feet for all the operational convenience of man.
BONSAI CULTURE!
You are right. It is a large scale “bonsai culture” of hundreds and hundreds of tea trees grown to a short height, not in earthen pots, but in Mother Nature’s lap. The aim is not to exhibit the art of bonsai, but to exploit the nature to the advantage of man with the help of science.
TEA PLUCKING AND PROCESSING!
The tea plucking is a beautiful operation. Just walk and see the plants opening their ‘two leaves and buds’ every where in the terminal shoots. They appear in all the pruned shoots, say in hundreds in a bush of tea.They readily allow the women harvester to pluck and put them in tea leaf baskets. Baskets of tea leaves are emptied into small trucks and sent to the factory for processing.
You can see the tea leaves being processed inside the tea factory. To explain in a simple way, the leaves are withered, fermented, roasted, graded through sieves into different sizes and packed in separate bulks in chests and gunny bags in convenient sizes. There may be about seven or eight grades of tea from each factory.
OLD AND NEW!
There is also difference in making of the teas also. The good old method of processing is adopted in some orthodox factories, while ultra modern method of CTC processing is done in most of the factories. The processing methods are different and so also the resultant teas. However, the raw materials are the very same “two leaves and buds”.
LOOSE TEA IS BULK TEA!
The teas are now made available in the form of bulk teas. In other words, they are graded and kept in loose form in bulk quantities ready to be shifted to godowns of auctioneers for selling to big traders.
Now, let us see the loose teas in different grades or sizes. Now, the teas are in the custody of auctioneers and tea brokers. You may ask for those samples of teas. Get a shock, here. What a surprise? They give you samples of teas of different kinds and grades and also from hundreds and hundreds of plantations, estates or factories. To a new entrepreneur, really it is a shock and starting of a state of confusion!
TEA IS NOT A SINGLE OR SIMPLE PRODUCT!
You thought that the packed tea is simply a single direct product; not so; all are not alike; when you make it as a tea drink, it differs every time; taste it sip by sip; feel the difference!
Only when you see the auction catalogues and samples, you will get astonished to see that there are hundreds and hundreds of varieties and kinds; again that all are not the same; they differ in their characters too.
Alright, there is something to know and something to do!
It is wonderful!
Now, you agree that there is a need to understand all kinds of teas,
in respect of their prime characters called, color, taste, flavor and strength.
WE WILL MOVE TO THE NEXT.
Please Note:
This information web site/blog will grow steadily.
However, you know ‘time is money and the fittest only survives’!
As a research scholar, grower, planter, trader, retailer or a part of this prestigious tea industry, please contact the author to get more information at a faster way.
CONTACT: teablendspnk@yahoo.co.in or pnkguru@yahoo.com
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