Tea is a shrub of the Camellia family, originally from China. Before spreading their consumption by the British, this drink was relatively unknown in the West. In fact, in the current producing countries except China, until 1820 only cultivation was practiced and used to grow Arabic coffee.
After an illness of the coffee plant in leaving a kind of blisters or blisters that made the plant is dry, the British began to try to plant the tea bush in their colonies, gradually getting used to this drink. Today I’ll tell you how the process for the production of this tea, the tea journey from the plant to the cup.
Tea production and harvesting
It was a British expeditionary named James Taylor who began planting seeds of the tea plant and then cuttings of the plant in the British colonies in Asia, such as India and Ceylon to whom we owe the pleasure of tea as we know it today.
Once planted the bush, it takes approximately two years to be ready to be harvested. Then collect leaves is a very hard work must now be harvested daily and only the newest outbreaks, usually sheet still unopened or silver tip and two open leaves, the lighter color.
This work is done usually women carrying sacks hooked forehead and are collecting leaves and saving them to fill the bag bearing supported on the back.
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Collecting a hard finch weeks so when a field is completed, go to the next, and in the time it takes to return to the first tea bushes are generating new shoots that are the ones that really are used.
To ensure the necessary rotation, the fields are divided into twenty plots and gathering way makes when it has finished harvesting the last plot, the first already has new green leaves to harvest, so the work is not interrupted.
When foragers filled sacs that have at their back, they move to the producing factory, where a process preparing leaves culminating in our cup begins.
Production and preparation of tea leaves for consumption
The production process basically consists of slightly dehydrated tea, cut it, and finally mole ferment slightly to package it for consumption, giving the leaves necessary for completion are more or less fine.
Once the leaves turn arrivals on long tables where tea is aerated to help dehydrate and lose a portion around 30% of its moisture. Once dehydrated is ready for the next step of the process.
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Tea, after drying or drying, moves to the mills where the sheet is cut into small pieces, sieving then to remove the nerves of the leaves or small sticks and letting it sit with hot air so that it occurs more or less fermentation.
Finally ground and ground to obtain the powder that tea bags are filled, or left in sheets, whether to make tea traditionally infusion, straining the leaves to serve or even leaving them in the cup. The process ends with the classification of different qualities and packaging.
As for the different varieties of tea we know, do not come from different plants, but from different times of harvest, different selected and different processes of preparation and fermentation, thus causing red green teas, white, black or leaves, and their different qualities.
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