In most regions of the world, tea leaves are transported by tractor after being harvested. In Turkey, you see men carrying absolutely enormous bags. They tumble them down the slopes, over the tea plants, until they reach the road.
Harvest
Transporting freshly harvested tea: a crucial stage
Manual skills are still essential in tea production
In most tea-producing countries, the best teas are plucked by hand. This means that growing high quality tea often requires the participation of many men and women. Not only is harvesting the leaves a meticulous task, but sorting them just before they are packed and dispatched is also done by hand. The work demands incredible patience.
After rice, tea is the agricultural resource that employs the greatest number of people around the world.
Special time spent with tea pluckers
The lunch break offers a special opportunity to sit down with the tea pluckers and get to know them. They don’t often get to see buyers, and are even less likely to have a conversation with them. It doesn’t take long before shyness turns into spontaneity. These are special moments which I enjoy very much.
First visit to Poobong
Vertiginous slopes and lingering mists form the scenery of Darjeeling. Out walking, a tea plucker appears in the thick fog. She climbs amongst the tea plants with astonishing agility. Poobong, a long-abandoned and inaccessible plantation, is gradually coming back to life. I am visiting it for the first time.
The jasmine flowers that scent our tea
It is difficult to imagine the amount of work that goes into making the tea we drink. To produce one kilo of a top quality jasmine tea, for example, it takes 2.5 kilos of jasmine flowers, no less. With 100 flowers, you can make just 25 grams. So no fewer than 10,000 flowers, individually picked by hand, are needed to scent a kilo of tea. And the plucking of flowers in the time-honoured tradition, which I witnessed last week in southern China, sometimes takes place in scorching temperatures.
Start of the “second flush” harvest in Darjeeling
The tea harvest in the south of Sri Lanka
Sometimes the people who harvest tea don’t have the necessary equipment to process the leaves. In this case, they sell their crop to another farmer who is able to process it.
This is what happens in the south of Sri Lanka, where each tea factory dispatches vehicles to collect bags from small producers.
The rooibos harvest in South Africa
The rooibos harvest has begun, and I am happy to be here. The harvest lasts less than two months. South Africa is the only country that produces rooibos, a plant sometimes known as “red tea”, but which is not a tea at all.
Rooibos is rich in antioxidants and is completely free of caffeine. It is my favourite drink before going to bed.
A winter harvest in Sri Lanka
The low sun illuminates these bags filled with freshly plucked tea leaves, creating a contrasting effect of light and shadow. The men work quickly, emptying the bags and spreading the leaves out on withering trays, so that there is no risk of them fermenting.
In some regions of Sri Lanka, tea is harvested at this time of year.