Plantation – Page 22 – Discovering Tea

In Japan, some teas are deprived of light

29 October 2010

In Japan, there are teas grown in the light, and teas grown in the shade. These shaded teas, which are called “Kabusecha” here, are deprived of light for three weeks before harvest. This inhibits the process of photosynthesis in the leaves, meaning the tea plant must draw heavily on its own store of nutrients. This changes the chemical composition of the leaves as well as the aromatic properties.

In terms of flavour, it makes the tea smoother and more delicate, and it develops less bitterness. The best known “Kabusecha” tea is called Gyokuro, which has distinctive dark green, fine, glossy leaves.

In this photo I took very near Shizuoka, you can see how some of the tea plants have been covered by a large tarpaulin to shade them from the light.

Darjeeling or “the stormy country”

28 September 2010

“Darjeeling” both refers to the tea plantations stretching out on thousands of hectares and the city you can see on this picture and where from I’m writing to you today. It’s a large town of hundreds of thousands people, or, in other words, a village on an Indian scale. It’s located at an altitude of 2100 meters and here you can see it under a rather mild sky if you consider that in Tibetan “Darje Ling” means “the stormy country”. The city is on a slope and when you walk around it, you actually spend more time climbing the narrow stairs snaking in and out the houses than crossing leaning streets. Tea is all there is, to such an extent that people don’t know where to build houses anymore, yet necessary to provide accommodation for an increasing population.

In Tumsong Tea Estate : a wonderful bungalow

24 September 2010

I’m leaving for Darjeeling in a few days. A long trip, hours of plane and four wheel drive. But I go through these hours smoothly as I’m so happy to see these mountains again. Once a year I take with me several people working for Le Palais des Thés. This year Fabienne, in charge of Le Palais des Thés in Lille, Stéphanie from Grenoble, Maud from Paris’ rue-Vieille-du-Temple are coming with me among others. I’ll soon introduce them to you.

We are first staying at Tumsong Tea Estate, an organically certified tea plantation of Darjeeling which has such a British cottage (photo) ! It’s a real pleasure to live in such a great house, nestled in the mountains as it is and exquisitely comfortable. All the more so as Rajiv Gupta, the plantation’s manager, keeps an eye on everything and is very concerned of your well-being. We visit his property together, from the factory to the nursery, without forgetting the river’s edge where it’s nice having a picnic.

These very British cottages are very common in Darjeeling: in each plantation the manager has a similar building, only the size and the style sometimes differ. You can easily stay there in Tumsong if you wish to as contrarily to most plantations, here tourists interested in tea are welcome for one or several nights (www.chiabari.com).

We are also thinking of organizing classes included in Tea School program. Anyone interested?

Deforestation: in Yunnan the danger is understood

21 September 2010

Tea growing has massively increased in Yunnan over the past 40 years. At the time, it was decided to step up production and increase the cultivation areas. And things moved very quickly, like often in China. In a very short time, all the trees were chopped down and not a single one was left. And if the mountains were left in place it’s only because they were not causing any trouble. As you can imagine, the landscape underwent a major transformation: as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a single copse, not a single tree top, not a single cluster of trees. Just tea plants, wherever you looked.

The result was not only staggering to the eye, but it also had an effect on the soil. Rain became scarce and erosion increased. The result of this large-scale deforestation and years of drought was that yields tumbled.

But the Chinese know how to adapt quickly when needed. So as soon as they realized the gravity of their action, they began replanting trees. It now gives us this lovely landscape, somewhere between Jinghong and Menghai. Note the young trees here and there, bringing shade and humidity to the tea plants and pleasing the eye.

On a tea plantation, trees need to be pruned too

17 September 2010

On a tea plantation, tea plants are not the only ones that need care and attention: the trees do too. If you want their leaves to give a little shade to the camelias, the trees have to be prevented from growing too tall. So from time to time, they have to be pruned severley, like here near Ivy Hills (Sri Lanka), to be kept low and start up again with renewed vigor.

In Taiwan, people take great care of semi-fermented teas

10 September 2010

In Taiwan, people take great care of semi-fermented teas (wu longs) left to wither outside. The grower first buy an electrical system of open-weave canvases that are moved across to shade the leaves when the sunlight gets too intense. Tea is then aired: it is raked very carefully, for hours, to prevent the leaves from starting to ferment.

Tea plantations form small villages

7 September 2010

Some tea plantations run by the British are so vast that several thousand people can live there, scattered across several hundred hectares. In southern India, like here in Thiashola, groups of buildings are home to one, two or three families. These houses form small villages where social life plays an important role. Although the buildings belong to the plantation, they are made available to the families as long as they work on the land. So this means that most houses are handed down from generation to generation.

A beautiful landscape doesn’t always make a good tea

31 August 2010

A beautiful landscape doesn’t always make a good tea. When I come from Bagdogra (India) and start the three-hour ascent into the Himalayan foothills, I love nothing more than stopping and admiring the view once I get through the stifling heat of Siliguri. The land is no longer completely flat, the city has disappeared from sight, the traffic and the horns have calmed down. Goats doze on the roadside. You start seeing far away above the trees and it helps bearing the heat: you suffocate much less when looking at a clear view. With the gentle breeze and the smell of the earth, I always stop walking between the tea plants.

Actually, I must say that they’re not good tea plants. People say that they are Darjeelings, but it’s not quite true: they are just outside the Darjeeling “appellation”, but close enough for dishonest merchants to use them to bulk out the real Darjeelings and cheat the buyers. This explains how there is four times as much Darjeeling tea sold worldwide than is actually produced.

Never mind, it’s the landscape that is worth admiring here. It is truly magnificent. I’m really attracted to this Terai plain, which used to be a jungle until the British cut down all the trees. People say you sometimes see wild elephants charging around and leopards. I feel good here, so I walk and walk before continuing on my way to Darjeeling. Why beeing in a hurry when it’s so beautiful around?

Xishuangbanna, celestial garden of Pu Er

20 August 2010

If you ever go to Xishuangbanna (I wish you to because this region of southern Yunnan (China), watered by the Mekong, offers landscapes of great beauty), you might see these mats set on the ground, on which tea is dried.

This is the first step in the making of the famous Pu Er, both considered great for some, terrifying for others, because of its strong smell. Here however, it’s only the first stage of production: the leaves wither in the sun for 24 hours, giving off a delicious perfume. It’s only later, when the same leaves will ferment 45 days that their smell will change considerably. I’ll talk to you again later about it. Meanwhile, enjoy this Xishuangbanna I love, this Celestial Garden as they sometimes call it, with its mountains covered by jungle, its breathtaking gorges. It is both wild and calm. In this part of China, we can really breathe.

The tea plant looks like a bonsai

13 August 2010

I mustn’t deceive you about the character of the tea plant. Don’t think that just because this shrub is kept close to the ground through successive pruning and harvesting that it is weedy or fragile in any way. The tea plant is nothing of the sort – on the contrary. Because it is constantly frustrated in its growth, the trunk of each shrub becomes incredibly thick. It is wide, knotted, twisted; in fact, a tea plantation looks rather like a forest of bonsais.