Tea processing – Discovering Tea

The cuttings nursery

15 March 2024

To make good tea, you need to know your tea bushes well. It’s a lot easier if you’ve tended them yourself from a young age. Many plantations – like this one in Satemwa, Malawi – take their own cuttings and then grow them in a nursery for eighteen months. Shaded to protect them from too much sun and too little humidity, the cuttings develop their root systems. Later, the young tea plants are planted out in the ground and begin their adult lives. Then it’s time to harvest the shoots, which are few and far between in the early seasons, but become more abundant as the bushes develop and branch out.

The second nose

3 November 2023

One of the trickiest stages in making black tea is achieving the right level of oxidation. The leaves are left to wither for a good ten hours or so, then tossed to bruise them and break down their structure. Then it’s time for the oxidation process, which requires humid conditions. During this stage, the leaves change colour from green to brown. Their aromas also change radically, developing notes of wood, stewed fruit and spices, among many others. When should oxidation be stopped? In Darjeeling, producers use the “second nose” principle. At the beginning of the oxidation process, the tea leaves give off an intense aroma that gradually fades after a few minutes, only to return in full force a while later. This return of aroma is known as the second nose. It signals that it’s time to stop oxidation as the perfect level has been achieved. All that remains is for the leaves to be dried, sorted and packaged.

Precision mechanics

29 September 2023

The Japanese are remarkably ingenious when it comes to harvesting tea. In the rest of the world, the leaves are hand-picked by legions of workers, but in Japan, labour is really expensive and so the growers have to do it themselves. This means using machines, each as well designed as the next. The quality of production is not affected by this mechanisation, as the Japanese are generally meticulous and take great care to do everything properly. Once the leaves have been gathered at the processing site, a sophisticated tool with an electronic eye is used to check that their shape, size, structure and colour are of the required quality.

Shade-grown tea

22 September 2023

There are teas grown in the light and there are teas grown in the shade. Shade-grown teas are made from leaves picked from shoots that have been deprived of light for three weeks before harvest, allowing them to develop the amino acids and umami flavour so prized by the Japanese. Japan is the traditional home of shade-grown teas, the most famous of which is Gyokuro. Its intensity and incomparable sweetness literally coat the palate, provided it is brewed correctly, at a very low temperature (50°C) and for just one or two minutes. It is best sipped from a tiny cup, like nectar.

Matcha is another shade-grown tea that has become well known in France, particularly for its use in pastries. It is made from finely ground shade-grown tea.

Barley and buckwheat

28 July 2023

There’s more to life than tea. There’s also barley and buckwheat. The seeds are roasted and then infused. It’s delicious hot or cold and has always been popular in Japan. In France, these crops are grown in Brittany, which is good because we don’t have to get it from the other side of the world. In the autumn, I’ll be introducing you to Yoann, a self-described “Breton alternative roaster”. By then, the ripe ears of barley will have been cut and the beautiful buckwheat flowers will have had time to go to seed. I hope you all have a wonderful summer.

Zen garden

19 July 2023

In Japan, a very orderly country, the tea bushes are tended in the neatest rows. They form a kind of Zen garden, and in Kyoto and many other parts of the archipelago, whenever you see them you just want to sit down and take it all in. The aesthetic is captivating.

Who will take over from this generation in Japan?

13 July 2023

One of the things you notice when you visit tea farms in Japan, going from factory to factory, is the age of the farmers. Often these couples represent the fourth, fifth, even sixth generation of tea producers in their family, but when you ask them about the next generation, there’s often no one left to take over. They have few or no children, and the latter are rarely inclined to carry on the family tradition. It’s a huge challenge for tea production in Japan. Of course, the land won’t disappear and the tea bushes probably won’t either: the fields will be taken over by a big tea company. But this mosaic of small producers, who farm an average of around 12 acres, contributes to the rich diversity of tea, as they all work with their preferred cultivars and the plants that are best suited to their terroir. I think it’s important to buy from them for as long as possible, to give the next generation every chance.

Hojicha, a wonderful roasted tea

23 June 2023

The most famous Japanese roasted tea, Hojicha (or Houjicha) is made from Bancha tea harvested in the autumn. After being processed using the traditional Japanese green tea method (steaming, shaping, drying), the leaves are roasted at 150°C for five minutes and then at 300°C for another five minutes. Nowadays, Hojicha is consumed more in those parts of the country where tea doesn’t grow, i.e. north of Tokyo, mainly on the island of Hokkaido. For food lovers, serve Hojicha lukewarm or at room temperature and pair its woody, animal notes with a Pont-l’Evêque, Livarot or any other soft cheese with a washed or bloomy rind.

Mechanised harvesting

16 June 2023

In Japan, the most prestigious harvest of the year takes place between late April and early May. This is when the famous Ichibancha, or first-flush teas, are made. The next plucking takes place in early June. This produces some interesting teas, but they aren’t up to the standard of the previous harvest. Here, on the outskirts of Shizuoka, I’m taking part in my own way, riding a Kawasaki that’s very different from the ones you see on our city streets. Because of the cost of labour, Japan is one of the few countries in the world that uses machines to pick its tea leaves.

Lucas the missionary

26 May 2023

In the Argelès-Gazost region of the Pyrenees mountains in south-west France, Lucas is something of a missionary. With a degree in agricultural engineering in his pocket, he returned to his family’s land to start growing tea. After spending time with producers in Laos, Indonesia, China and Nepal, this pioneer now oversees a new estate of several thousand plants. He watches over them all attentively, observing how the different cultivars grow, and is already producing delicious teas which he brews in a Chinese gaiwan, allowing the leaves to reveal their full potential. Humble yet strong-willed and confident, Lucas wants to create a model of sustainable European tea cultivation that will set an example in agroecology. Here, he explains this to Sidonie, who is with me to record our podcast: Un Thé, Un Voyage.