Category Archives: Tea Manufacture

Yesterday, I was once again asked about the tea leaf – my customer called it “raw tea”.  Was it green and was it fresh and how does it get manufactured?  I explained about plucking tea (yes, plucking, not picking) – that each day, teams of workers, usually women, pluck a specified area of bushes.  The [...]

Tea comes in all kinds of styles and shapes.  Black tea is often associated with a grade: OP – orange pekoe (denoting a full leaf tea) FOP – flowery orange pekoe BOP – broken orange pekoe TGFOP – tippy, golden flowery orange pekoe Within the grade, however, appearances can differ widely.  Pictured on the right [...]

What color is fresh tea leaf? And how does black tea become black? We get this question at just about every Tea Tasting session and from our regular customers. The simple answer is that all leaf starts out as green. The first step in black tea manufacture is called Withering. Here we show a picture [...]

We sometimes forget how dependent we are on the weather. How out of our control it is. This year, the regions of Assam and Darjeeling in northern India experienced a devastating, lingering drought, described by many as the worst in their living memory. It has played havoc with our Spring purchases. In fact, the organic [...]