Nilgiri
The Nilgiri region, situated in Southern India, forms a high hilly plateau at the conjunction of the Eastern and Western Ghat Mountains. More than 20,000 smallholders grow and plucked tea with some 37,000 hectares under cultivation. Most Nilgiri teas are used for blending but there is a rapidly growing demand for the speciality tea of the area. Nilgiri has a bright amber colour when liquored, with a refreshing, crisp bouquet and taste.
Plantation to Cup
How Tea is grown
A member of the Camellia family, tea (Camellia Sinensis) is an ever-green tropical plant. It has green, shiny pointed leaves – not dissimilar to privet hedges seen in Britain – and was originally indigenous to both China and India. In its wild state, tea grows best in regions which enjoy a warm, humid climate which a rainfall measuring at least 100 cm a year.
Tea plants have small, white, sweet-smelling flowers. Each flower produces three seeds that look like hazelnuts. On a tea estate or in a tea garden where tea plants are grown commercially, workers plant the seeds in a nursery bed. Another method of cultivating tea involves planting cuttings of tea plants in the bed. The grower will select plants with desirable qualities, such as high yield or special flavour. About a year later, when the plants have reached a height of approximately 20 centimetres, they are transplanted to the field. About 7,500 tea plants grow on 1 hectare of land.
Ideally, tea bushes like deep, light acidic and well drained soil. Given these conditions, tea will grow from sea level up to altitudes as high as 2,100 metres above sea level. The tea varies in flavour and characteristics according to the type of soil, altitude and climate, conditions of the area in which it is grown. The way it is processed also affects the flavour and characteristic, as does the blending of different teas from different areas.
The tea plant is attacked by several injurious insects, the most important of which is the fagot worm. The tea borer, which is the larva of a cossid moth, attacks the stems and branches of the tea plant. Several species of scale insects attack the tea plant. Several mites also feed on it, including a red spider and the yellow tea mite, which destroys the buds.
Tea Estate
Today, tea is grown on estates or smallholdings. A smallholding is privately owned and can be as small as 0.5 hectares or can cover several hectares. In various tea-producing countries where tea is grown on smallholdings, co-operatives are formed to build a tea-processing factory, central to a group of smallholders. The owners of the smallholdings sell their plucked leaf to the factories for processing. An estate is a self-contained unit often hundreds of hectares in size, housing its own factory, tea-growing area, schools, hospital, staff houses and gardens, places of worship, reservoir and guest house.
Cloning
Under modern cultivation, tea is grown as a bush approximately 1 metre high, for ease of plucking, which are grown from cuttings or clones. These are carefully nurtured in nursery beds until ready for planting out. Young bushes are planted approximately 1.5 metres apart, in rows a distance of 1 metre between each row. In the higher altitudes, these rows follow the contours of the hills or mountainsides to avoid soil erosion. At some of the higher altitudes, terraces are built, again to avoid soil erosion.
The bush itself is trained into a “fan” shape, with a flat top called a plucking plateau, about 1 x 1.5 metres in area and takes between 3-5 years to come to maturity. This is dependent on the altitude at which the tea is grown. Before the first plucking, the bushes are severely pruned by a method known as “lung” pruning.
The bushes are plucked, mostly by hand every 7-14 days. Altitude and climatic conditions of the growing area are the two deciding factors in this re-growth period. A tea bush grown at sea level will replace itself more quickly once it is plucked, than a tea bush growing at a higher altitude, where the air is often cooler. Only the top two leaves and a bud are plucked from the sprigs on the plucking plateau.
How tea is made
The plucked leaf is collected in a basket or bag carried on the back of the plucker and when this is full it is taken to a collection point where the plucked leaf is weighed before being taken to the factory for processing or “making”, as tea manufacture is known in the tea trade. If pluckers are harvesting an area near the factory, they will take their plucked leaf direct to the factory for weighing. On an estate, each plucker is credited with their own weight of tea for subsequent payment. The currency of India is the rupee. A skilled plucker can gather up to between 30-35 kilograms of plucked leaf in a day, sufficient to produce about 7.5 to 9kg of processed black tea.
As black tea has the major share of the tea market in terms of production, sales and amounts drunk, most tea factories produce black tea.
At the factory
On arrival at the factory, the plucked leaf is spread on vast trays or racks, normally placed at the top of the factory and are left to wither in air at 25-30 degree centigrade. The moisture in the leaf evaporates in the warm air leaving the leaves flaccid. This process can take between 10-16 hours, depending on the wetness of the leaf. Some factories will gently hasten the process with the air of warm air fans.
The withered leaf is broken by machine so that the natural juices, or enzymes, are released and on contact with air will oxidise. This breaking is done by two methods “Orthodox” and “Unorthodox” – terms are used to describe the machinery used. The Orthodox machine rolls the leaf, which produces large leaf particles known as grades. While the “Unorthodox” term covers teas broken by either a CTC (Cut, Tear and Curl) or rotovane machine. Both chop the leaf into smaller particles than those which are produced by the Orthodox method. The smaller particles are more suited to modern market demands for a quicker brewing finished product.
The broken leaf is laid out either on trays or in troughs in a cool, humid atmosphere for 3-4 hours to ferment, or oxidise and is gently turned every so often throughout the period until all the leaves turn a golden russet colour and fermentation is complete.
After fermentation, the leaf is dried and fired. This is done by passing the broken fermented leaf through hot air chambers, where all the moisture is evaporated and the leaves turn a dark brown or black colour.
The black tea is ejected through the hot chamber into chests. Next it is sorted into grades or leaf particle sizes, by being passed through a series of wire mesh sifts of varying sizes into containers before being weighed and packed into chests or “tea sacks” for loading onto pallets.
Factory tea tasters will taste the finished “make” to ensure that no mistakes have been made during the manufacture or that the tea has not been contaminated by anything within the factory. Samples of the “make” are sent to selling brokers world-wide. All brokers will evaluate the tea for quality and price, reporting back to the Estate or Co-operative, so the tea can be sold to the best advantage.
After each “make” the tea factory is washed from top to bottom to ensure that the completed “make” does not contaminate the next “make” of tea.
Green Tea Manufacture
For Green tea manufacture, the green leaf is steamed and rolled before drying or firing. This is done to prevent the veins in the leaf breaking and thus stopping any oxidisation or fermenting of the leaf. When brewed, green tea has a very pale colour and the wet leaf often whole. Green tea is drunk mainly in China, Japan and some parts of South America. In the Western world Green tea is sometimes drunk as a speciality tea.
Oolong Manufacture
Oolong tea is a semi-green or semi-fermented tea. It follows the same process as black tea, but the fermentation period is cut down to half the time, about 1 – 2 hours, before it is fired or dried. Such tea is a leaf or orthodox tea and is best drunk without milk as it has a pale, bright liquor with a very delicate flavour.
India Tea
A blend of teas from all parts of India, this is often served as afternoon tea or after a meal. It is a full-bodied, refreshing with delicate hints of its regional origins.
Trading Tea
Tea is sold in a variety of ways. Tea may be sold at auction in countries of origin. There are international auction centres in Mombasa in Kenya, Colombo in Sri Lanka, and Limbe in Malawi. India has auction centres in the north and south. Indonesia sells in Jakarta. Tea brokers act as intermediaries and taste, value and bid on their clients behalf. Tea may also be sold from the Tea Garden by private sale or at off-shore auction whilst on route to its destination.
Tea Blending
Approximately 90% of the tea drunk in Britain is known as the popular brand leading blends. These are a blend of teas which contain up to 35 different teas and remain constant in quality, character and flavour, despite some teas being seasonal or in short supply due to adverse weather conditions in one or other of the growing regions. Each popular blend has its own recipe and that recipe is the Company’s trade secret. All the international popular brand leading blends are blended to cope with the varying types of water in Britain be they soft, hard or middle of the road.
It is the job of the tea-blender – a tea taster of many years standing – to ensure that his company blend meets all the criteria. To do this, the blenders and buyers – all tea tasters – will taste the teas bought at auction on arrival at the tea packing factory to reassess that they have not been contaminated or damaged whilst in the warehouses awaiting the auction.
During the course of the day, a blender can taste between 200-1000 teas, adjusting his recipe to ensure that the company’s brand remains constant. His findings are fed into a computer and the prerequisite numbers or sacks and chests of the different teas are taken from the company storeroom, opened and conveyed into large blending drum. This rotates, mixing all the teas together. When the blending is complete, the blend is ready for packaging into packets or tea bags.
