This is part 3 of my guide on the art of tea. Find part 1 here.
Picking Tea
You can't help but laugh whenever you see those over-the-top stock photographs of folks dressed to the nines in ritual clothes and cosmetic imagining to pick tea in the fields being handed off as an real documentary showing how just about anyone's tea is made.
Although cultures, religions, and ethnical minorities (especially in Yunnan) may have ritualized picking ceremonies, the actual gardening work is separate from the ceremony, and appears not like the pictures. That is back-breaking strong work force,, labor force that starts early and goes all day. This is almost always added by the oldest users of a family, as it needs a stoic persona and an experienced palm. Our farmer friends dress in their beloved clothes that they don't head getting quite dirty, and wrap their heads for protection from the sunshine. They wear tennis shoes for comfort, and put on some good Far east pop streamed on their cellular phones or pass the time gossiping.
The first decision of picking is whether or to never mechanize the process. The amount of work that should go into picking is tremendous. Even a tiny field requires a major team to choose on time. Using machine blades is tempting. The disadvantage is broken leaf and bitter tea. Hand-picking ensures control, and minimal the break point.
The second big decision is exactly what exactly to opt for. Some people want to try to blanket-simplify the complete industry and say that the best is always just buds, or perhaps two leaves and a bud, but our friends think a lot about what they pick and some decide to do something differently for aesthetic reasons. For example, in Qianjiazhai, the two Li Family and Master Zhou love the flavor of their tea best when the fragile buds are balanced with a larger than "usual" amount of stem. The stem brings a great deal of sweetness to their pu'er and brings away the flavor of areas. Mr. He in Laoshan certainly picks the small little bud clusters that commence to form before Qingming, but his favorite harvesting as the da tian harvest when the leaves are a little bigger and don't require coverage by the greenhouse any more. He picks leaves with buds for this collect and swears by the richer flavor.
No subject what is being picked out, it is important to our friends in China and tiawan that the tea is picked cleanly by experienced hands. Everyone we understand values the tea plants they pick, and think of those plants as life that will be around longer than any of us. Li Xiangxi in Wuyishan needs help to get her Jin Jun Mei picked on time, but won't hire help from the outside. Says it takes years to master the intuition of which buds to select, also to master the gestures of how to pick most cleanly. Instead of employing help, she helps her neighbors pick on the pick day and they help her when she needs it so that only skilled and local work force,, labor force is touching the plant life.
Finally, farmers need to think about the future of their tea plants and make sure that just the right amount of tea is picked. If you don't pick a herb for a year, it loses density and the leaves become older and more challenging, so it is important to pick to encourage growth, but picking too often damages a herb. In Qianjiazhai most woods are only picked once a year so that the trees can certainly still increase larger over time. Discovering the right balance of picking is crucial to the plants permanent health.
Timing
Understanding the role of time in the flavor of tea is critical to any farmer. So much of flavor is dependent upon the decision of just what day to pick each year. Weather conditions is unpredictable, so growers can't stick to the same calendar date for picking. Too early and the yield will be to small , not yet have enough flavor. Inside its final stages and the sweetness will have been spent by the plant in adding out more leaves and flowers. Even within a single day, a few hours can be all the difference.
In Laoshan, picking starts before the sun even rises. The new fresh buds are so young they don't have been exposed to a full days sun. Mainly because soon as the light hits the leaves, blattgrün kicks into gear which makes the leaf green, but also more poisonous and grassy. The This individual family attempts to end their picking before 10AM when the sun reaches the angle that would hit their plants straight.
Beyond finding the right day and moment for picking, timing is important in processing and even ageing. Waiting is an art all its own. Xingyang Workshop pile-ferments their shu pu'er. Many of the much larger workshops love to cut down the fermentation time by adding water. Instead, Xingyang covers their tea with a tarp and allows the natural moisture of the leaf itself to produce the humid environment, It will take an extra two weeks, but the result is smooth and clean tea. Fermentation with added drinking water, on the other palm, can look to quickly and produce fishy pu'er.
In Fenghuang, waiting is practiced in managing the release of their tea. Master Huang Rui Guang believes that Dancong is best after 2-4 months. He believes the roasting process imparts so much flavor that the dark flavor imparted in roasting needs time to settle out of the tea. He his family release tea once it has reached perfect flavor rather than leaving that timing to the reseller.
Read the next chapter of the Art of Tea series on control and finishing