July 2010 – Discovering Tea

Tea leaves that are worth a detour

30 July 2010

In the south of Sri Lanka, tea is mostly grown by individual farmers who cultivate their own land. They sell the tea leaves just after the harvest, as they don’t have the infrastructure to process them. The farmers don’t have to go far to find buyers: their freshly plucked tea leaves are very much wanted by the local tea factories, who even go and collect the bags filled with fresh tea leaves themselves because of competition.

I spent hours going round the farms in one of these 4x4s fitted out with trays and it’s an incredible experience: we sometimes had to get the bags high in the mountains, skidding on the steep slopes, driving along vertiginous drops, crossing forests under cries of monkeys. We’d then suddenly end up on the top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere, around farmers breeding cattle and living out of different cultivations.

So we’d buy the tea leaves, chat a little, maybe drink a tea together. We’d talk. We’d laugh. And it’d then be time to go and collect more tea bags from other isolated farms.

The Sumela monastery

27 July 2010

In case you had of Turkey an image of a very hot country, I’d like to tone it down a bit. If tea enjoys being on these mountains lining the Black Sea, it’s exactly because here when you climb up a little, it’s much cooler and there are plenty of clouds and rain. “It rains all the time in Rize and if it doesn’t rain it snows !” have I often heard.

The Sumela monastery –whose picture can only be taken by patient people- is precisely located in the area where tea is grown. You can notice that nature looks close to the one found in the Alps. And these threads of fog remind me of the Himalayan foothills. So now you surely understand why tea enjoys it here !

The Sumela monastery

Tea is in the bag

23 July 2010

What a beautiful warm evening light illuminating these string bags filled with fresh tea leaves. This is happening in Dellawa (Sri Lanka). In a few minutes, these leaves will be taken to the top floor of the tea factory where they’ll undergo the first stage of processing: withering. A stage that can take up to 20 hours for this type of black tea and consists simply in remaining the leaves spread out in thin, long and well ventilated trays. Water will thereby be taken out of the fresh tea leaves.

Under the palm trees of Nantou, Dong Ding tea

20 July 2010

In Taiwan, in the Nantou region for example, well-known for its Wu Long teas (Dong Ding, etc.), the tall and spindly trunks of the palm trees contrast with the rows of tea plants and give the landscape a very graphic appearance.

I have to admit that this impression is emphasized by the fact that I have been a little disrespectful to the posers in the foreground by chopping their head off…

Cheerful plucker looking like a tea missionary

16 July 2010

On the Terai plain (area straddling Nepal and India), I’ve seen them use strange crosses to mark the height of tea plants. The cross is stuck into the ground and only the shoots growing above the horizontal bar are plucked. It makes this cheerful plucker look a bit like a tea missionary.

Thé glacé: une boisson sans sucre, saine et désaltérante

13 July 2010

Vendredi dernier, j’ai passé la journée dans ma salle de dégustation. Mais dans cette pièce d’habitude fraîche il faisait si chaud qu’après avoir dégusté un grand nombre de Darjeeling 2nd flush j’ai eu envie d’un thé froid. Je m’en suis préparé deux différents, car j’aime bien faire des comparaisons : un Thé des Songes ainsi qu’un Thé des Sables.

La recette du thé glacé est simplissime : vous mettez 15 grammes de thé à infuser dans un litre d’eau pendant 30 minutes, puis vous passez le thé à l’aide d’un passe-thé ou bien d’un filtre et c’est prêt ! Après cela, libre à vous de mettre la carafe ou la bouteille au réfrigérateur, si vous voulez un thé glacé plutôt qu’un thé froid. Au moment de servir, et comme suggestion d’accompagnement, quelques glaçons avec des fruits d’été pris dans la glace (myrtilles, framboises, groseilles) : c’est joli et gourmand.

Pour vous aider dans le choix des thés qui sont délicieux consommés froid, voici quelques uns de mes favoris : Bancha Hojicha, Grand Jasmin Chung Feng, Genmaïcha, Tie Guan Yin, Thé des Sables, Thé des Enfants, Thé du Hammam, Thé des Songes Blancs, ainsi que la plupart des thés parfumés à base d’agrumes ou de fruits rouges…
Bonne dégustation !

P.S. : sur la photo, juste derrière la carafe de Thé des Songes, l’un des petits théiers que l’on m’a offert au Japon en avril dernier. J’en prends grand soin et il me le rend bien : il a déjà doublé de taille !

Ye Yingkai, producer of Fujian teas

9 July 2010

Ye Yingkai, pictured beside me, is a great connoisseur of Fujian teas. His story is singular, as he started out working for the State Corporation in charge of tea exports in his province, before forming his own company. He then acquired a farm, fields, in order to produce his own tea. Parallel to that, he hunts out great Tie Guan Yin, rare Da Hong Pao, as well as extremely fine jasmine teas.

He has been working with Le Palais Des Thés for nearly 20 years, and of course he’s a great friend of mine.

Green tea from a wide angle

6 July 2010

Of course, from a wide angle, it looks both a little easy and spectacular. Here, it extends the building, shortens the individuals and spreads tea just the way it is required. Spreading the leaves is in fact exactly what has to be done after plucking to avoid fermentation. All the leaves in the baskets are put together and spread into a thin layer just like this women wearing a white headdress has just done. And since green tea (a Bai Mao Hou, “Hairy White Monkey”, to be precise) is going to be made here, armfuls of tea leaves will soon be roasted in a big wok.

White tea withering

2 July 2010

White teas are one of the Fujian district’s (China) main specialties. The most well-known ones are named Bai Mu Dan (White Peony) and Yin Zhen (Silver Needles).
The manufacturing process of white tea is quite simple, as it can be summed up in two words: withering and firing.
Traditionally, white tea is withered in the open air, just like here on these large bamboo pans which have been placed according to the course of the sun. This procedure will last from 48 to 60 hours. It is thus better to take the colour of the sun in consideration before plucking the leaves, in order for the harvest not to be ruined by the rain!