Tea Grades-Kinds-Varieties: Learn All About Teas!

SILVERSHINE TEA FACTORIES:

L ook at the tea factories located on the hill tops; their metallic tops are shining in the sunlight; they leave smoke in the sky demonstrating that they are active in the production of raw teas.
When you admire at the birds eye view of the plantation, come down and drive in a jeep and see the estates at a closer look. The tea plants are not really short bushes, but tall growing trees kept pruned and grown to a short height of about 4 feet for all the operational convenience of man.



BONSAI CULTURE:

You are right. It is a large scale “bonsai culture” of hundreds and hundreds of tea trees grown to a short height, not in earthen pots, but in Mother Nature’s lap. The aim is not to exhibit the art of bonsai, but to exploit the nature to the advantage of man with the help of science.
The tea plucking is a beautiful operation. Just walk and see the plants opening their ‘two leaves and buds’ every where in the terminal shoots. They appear in all the pruned shoots, say in hundreds in a bush of tea, readily allowing the women harvester to pluck and put in tea leaf baskets. Baskets of tea leaves are emptied into small trucks and sent to the factory for processing.

You can see the tea leaves being processed inside the tea factory. To explain in a simple way, the leaves are withered, fermented, roasted, graded through sieves into different sizes and packed in separate bulks in chests and gunny bags in convenient sizes. There may be about seven or eight grades of tea from each factory.

ALL THE TEAS ARE DIFFERENT:

There is also difference in making of the teas also. The good old method of processing is adopted in some orthodox factories, while ultra modern method of CTC processing is done in most of the factories. The methods are different and so also the resultant teas, while the raw materials are the same”two leaves and buds”.
The teas are now made available in the form of bulk teas or in other words, they are graded and kept in loose form in bulk quantities ready to be shifted to godowns of auctioneers for selling to big traders.

HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF TEA ESTATES-ALL ARE DIFFERENT!

Now, let us see the loose teas in different grades or sizes. Now, the teas are in the custody of auctioneers and tea brokers. You may ask for those samples of teas. Get a shock, here.

What a surprise? They give you samples of teas of different kinds and grades and also from hundreds and hundreds of plantations, estates or factories. To a new entrepreneur, really it is a shock and starting of a state of confusion!

You thought that tea is simply a single direct product; all will be alike; you can just make it as a tea drink; enjoy consuming it sip by sip. Only when you see the auction catalogues and samples, you will get astonished to see that there are hundreds and hundreds of varieties and kinds; again that all are not the same; they differ in their characters too. Alright, there is something to know and something to do! It is wonderful!

Now, you agree that there is a need to understand all kinds of teas in respect of their prime characters called, color, taste, flavor and strength.