Tea (2 page)

The obsession for tea in England during the nineteenth century had devastating effects half a world away in China and India. As England expanded her imperialistic powers, she became more greedy for tea and the profits it engendered. When the British realized that trading opium for tea was more lucrative than buying tea with silver, they quickly developed a huge opium industry in India. The ruling British class in India forced local farmers to grow opium poppies in their fields, rather than food crops. The result was hunger and deprivation in India and the Opium Wars and their tragic toll in China.

Much of tea's history illustrates the never ending human story of class division—of greed, power, and wealth on one side and of hunger and poverty on the other. This was true in eighth-century China when the emperor forced peasants to produce tea instead of planting their own rice crops for food; it is equally true today in India, as many of the tea plantations are closed. The owners move on, while the workers are left on abandoned plantations with no medicine, running water, or food.

Not all of tea's history is dark and depressing, however, for it has provided, and still does provide, livelihoods for millions of people. Today many small growers throughout the world—from Southeast Asia to South America—plant and cultivate this ancient crop. And people all over the world enjoy the incomparable taste of tea.

The story of tea is the story of humankind in a nutshell, or perhaps a teacup. It includes the best and the worst of who we are and what we do. Throughout its long history, tea has been used as medicine, as an aid to meditation, as currency, as bribes, and as a means of controlling rebellions. It has been the instigation for wars and global conflicts. It has also been the reason for parties, for family gatherings, and for high-society occasions. In short, tea has touched and changed our lives as no other beverage has, connecting us all—from the workers to the monks, from the pluckers to the emperors, from the British to the Chinese, to me.

As I sit and sip yet another cup of tea, it is my hope that the story of tea will teach us lessons of humankind and of human kindness, that we will find that tea did not merely change the world, but changed humanity.

“O tea! O leaves torn from the sacred bough! O stalk,
gift born of the great gods! What joyful region bore thee?”

T
HE MAGIC OF TEA
is well camouflaged, for the leaves that produce one of the tastiest of all beverages look no more exciting than the leaves of many other types of trees or shrubs. But, if picked at the right moment, processed in the correct manner, packaged and protected against humidity, mold, and other impurities, then properly brewed, these leaves produce a beverage unlike any other.

Tea has a long history as a beverage and is grown in many different places in the world. It is not surprising, therefore, that a confusing mass of terminology is used to describe the plant itself and the methods by which it has been processed during the past two thousand years. The following sections of this chapter will introduce and clarify many of these terms, as we begin to explore the complex and exciting world of tea.

NATURAL HISTORY

Some teas, such as Darjeeling, are named for the region in which they are grown and processed. Other teas have specific names but are generally only grown and processed in a particular region—Keemun from China, for example. But all true tea comes from a single species of plant, Camel-lia sinensis, which is in the family Theaceae. This family also includes other shrubs of horticultural value, such as the ornamental
Franklinia
and
Stewartia
. Although the botanical name for tea is offcially
Camellia sinensis
, the tea plant is still sometimes found under many other outdated names, including
Thea viridis
,
Thea sinensis
,
Thea bohea
,
Camellia theifera
,
Camellia thea
, and
Camellia bohea
.

Camellia sinensis
is an evergreen shrub that produces small aromatic flowers with white petals and numerous golden stamens. Botanists have divided this single species (
sinensis
) into two distinct varieties,
sinensis
and
assamica
.
Camellia sinensis
var.
sinensis
is indigenous to western Yunnan in China and was known for centuries (or perhaps millennia) before the assam variety was discovered.
Camellia sinensis
var.
assamica
is indigenous to the Assam region of India, and to Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and southern China. Although there are many specimens of large tea plants found in the forests of these regions, tea has been cultivated for so many centuries there, and the plant crossbreeds so readily, that it is impossible to tell if these are relics of ancient plantings or truly wild, indigenous species.

Although anatomically dissimilar enough for botanists to designate them as different varieties, the two plants put forth leaves that, when processed in the same way, taste surprisingly similar. The differences in the tastes of green, black, and oolong teas are a result of the different ways in which the leaves are processed.
Sinensis
and
assamica
crosspollinate easily, which has resulted in any number of hybrids with varying degrees of the qualities of one or the other variety, creating a continuous range of characteristics between them.

A tea plant can be called either a tree or shrub, depending on circumstances. Left on its own under favorable conditions, a tea plant will grow to be tree-sized. In cultivation, tea plants are kept pruned to shrub size. Regular pruning cycles, which vary from every two to every four years, keep tea shrubs at about one meter (a little over three feet), a height convenient for picking the leaves.

Although the first cultivated tea plants were grown from seed, the preferred propagation method today is to take cuttings from vigorous shrubs. The cuttings are placed in nursery beds and are carefully tended for twelve to fifteen months before they are planted in the tea garden. When an individual plant reaches a height of approximately half a meter (fifteen to eighteen inches), it is cut back to within a few inches of the ground. This severe pruning causes the plant to grow in a V shape, creating a “plucking table”—a flat shape that greatly increases the number of terminal buds growing along the upper surface of the plant. Depending on the region in which they are grown, shrubs are spaced from one to one and a half meters (about three to five feet) apart.

In its native habitat, tea grew in open woodland or in the dappled shade at the borders between woodland and open field, an area that includes both sun and shade. Tea growers at lower elevations (such as Assam and Kenya) mimic this environment as closely as possible, and large trees are grown in the tea plantations for the purpose of providing shade for the tea shrubs. The most commonly used shade trees include albizzia, erythrina, gliricidia and silver oak. Shade trees not only provide needed relief from the intense light and heat, but also serve to improve soil conditions and prevent rampant growth of weeds.

In warm climates (at lower elevations), plants are ready for harvest at about two and a half years. At higher elevations, where growth is slower, it takes five years before the first leaves from a plant are ready to harvest. Tea plants grown at lower elevations produce a greater quantity of leaves in a single growing season, but those grown at higher elevations—such as in the Darjeeling district of India where plants are grown on the lower slopes of the Himalayas—produce much finer teas.

In most regions, the best-quality tea is still picked by hand, although mechanical harvesters are becoming more and more common. Workers who harvest the leaves by hand are traditionally called pluckers. An experienced plucker can pick between thirty and thirty-five kilograms (sixty-six to seventy-seven pounds) of tea every day. For the highest-quality tea, only the first two leaves and the bud, and sometimes only the bud, are picked at any one time, and are tossed into a basket carried on the worker's back. Although leaves from each shrub may be harvested from three to five times during a single year, the quality of the leaves differs according to the season in which they were picked. “First flush,” meaning the first leaves harvested in the season, are usually the best quality. “Flush” refers to a period of active growth during which the leaves can be gathered. In the Darjeeling region, the first flush lasts from March through April, the second begins in May and lasts through June, and the third occurs in autumn, from September through November. During the months between June and September, monsoon rains prevent harvesting in this region.

Depending on the variety (
assamica
or
sinensis
) and where it grows, a tea shrub can produce for at least fifty years. The greatest productivity of
Camellia sinensis
var.
sinensis
occurs during the first fifty years, although the plant will continue to produce for up to one hundred years.

TEA HARVEST AND PROCESSING

The processing methods for tea vary, according to the kind of tea desired—white, green, oolong, or black. Every tea master, just like every wine master, has a unique of way of creating a special product, but in general, the same basic steps are performed to make leaves into tea. Not every step is necessary for making each type of tea, however. Black tea, for example, involves every stage, while white tea involves only a few.

Once the buds and leaves are plucked, they are brought in from the field within two to three hours for the finest-quality tea. If the picked leaves are bruised, left unattended for too long, or allowed to get too warm, the cell walls in the leaf break down and oxidation begins, resulting in an unpleasant, bitter flavor. This must have been what the earliest tea drinkers experienced, as they plucked leaves and put them directly into boiling water, immediately starting the oxidation process. Letters and diaries from ancient China refer to tea as a bitter brew, and praise its health benefits rather than its taste. As with many other beverages, including coffee and wine, the taste of tea has been greatly enhanced by the evolution of processing methods.

The freshly plucked leaves may undergo one or more of the following processes, which are parts of what's called an orthodox method of tea processing:

1
.
Withering.
Fresh, green leaves and buds are softened by withering. The leaves are placed on racks in a large, heated room, or sometimes simply allowed to air-dry in the sunshine. The purpose of withering is twofold: First, a biochemical reaction occurs, as the starch in the leaf begins to
convert to sugar. The second change is physical, as the moisture content of the leaves drops by
50
to
80
percent. The result is a soft, pliable leaf that can be rolled without breaking. Withering can take anywhere from ten to twenty-four hours, or, when white tea is processed, only about four or five hours.