Tea Plantations

This is my second post of the day, so look below for some pictures of my trip.

Have you ever wondered where tea comes from? Me either. I mean, it's just there in the store, not looking very exotic or interesting, neatly packaged in little bags. Add one bag to some warmish water, and drink when coffee isn't available. I mean, coffee, there's a story! Starbucks has made sure we think about coffee, the fair trade people have made sure we ask where coffee comes from. But tea? I never gave it a thought.

I never gave it a thought until I was in tea country. Tea country is up country, in Sri Lanka, around Bandarawella and Nuwera Eliya. The hills there (and it's all hills)are covered with tea bushes, thick, hedge like bushes about waist height.

The tea is plucked (always plucked as two leaves and a bud together, sometimes three leaves and a bud) by Tamil workers. It's mostly women who do the plucking, and you can see them wandering through the fields with enormous baskets on their backs, dressed in bright colours, plucking the tea. They don't get paid very much for it, and don't live in very nice quarters either.

Once plucked, the tea has to be withered- dried out. Most of the moisture needs to be removed, but how this is done is important. The older factories use natural methods, the more modern factories blow hot air. Either way, the leaves are left overnight to wither.

The next morning they are poured into a machine that cuts and grinds the tea leaves. Then they are left in piles to ferment. This is the part I was surprised about - that tea is fermented. Anyway, it ferments for just the right amount of time (no one would say what that is - a trade secret I guess), and then put into a drying machine, which finishes the fermenting and does the last of the drying.

From there it's mostly sorting. There are various grades, from Orange Pekoe tea, which is high quality, to the dust which is the lowest quality. Then it is packed up, and shipped overseas.

I didn't ask about when it gets put in the little bags. People here take their tea seriously, and don't seem to think much of tea bags. The people at the factory I toured take tea really seriously, taking all the fun out of it, as only connoisseurs can. If you've ever met a connoisseur, whether of coffee, beer, wine or anything, you know that all their talk about flavour and quality takes away from the simple fact that those drinks are just delicious!