Tag Archives: China

A Brief History of Tea

Lu Yu – In Xi’an on the grounds of the Great Wild Goose Pagoda by Nat Krause, July 26, 2005, CC – 2.0

The history of tea is too long for a single blog post, but here we try to hit the highlights and key milestones in time. Tea has been consumed by humans for a really long time and has influenced international relations for centuries. According to legend, tea was discovered in 2737 BCE in China when the leaves of a nearby evergreen fell into the boiling water of the Emperor Shen Nung creating a beverage that reinvigorated him. The first credible texts referencing tea plantations and the consumption of tea appear around 1000 BCE. However, it took until the Tang dynasty (618-906 CE) for tea to become China’s national beverage. It was during this dynasty that Lu Yu wrote the first book entirely about tea called Ch’a Ching, The Classic of Tea.

Tea appears to have first travelled beyond China during the late 500’s CE to Japan by way of Japanese Buddhist monks who utilized tea during their meditation rituals to maintain alertness. Tea was first offered to the Russians in 1618, but the Czar did not like the taste, so tea failed to take hold there until the middle of the 1600’s. Once the taste did develop in Russia, tea traveled thousands of miles in a caravan and was most likely the same Pu-erh tea that was traded with the Mongolians and Tibetans. Even though European explorers like Marco Polo mention tea in their logs as early as the 13^th century, Europeans did not come into contact with tea in any large scale until 1627 CE by way of a Portuguese trading vessel. As an American, tea is considered to be British, but it was the mainland of Europe that adopted tea first and it wasn’t until Charles II married a Portuguese princess, some forty years later, that tea took hold as fashionable in Britain with the British East India Company placing its first order of tea in 1664_{(UK Tea Council, 2014)}. Today, Europe still maintains a significant role in the tea trade with parts of the continent exporting more tea than some of the countries that actually grow it commercially.

Painting by Lai Fong of an American Clipper Ship

Portrait of an American Clipper Ship by Lai Fong (Lai Fong of Calcutta, fl. 1870-1910) currently at Childs Gallery, Boston, MA

Tea traveled with the colonists to America and it is the tax on tea that is credited as pushing the colonists to their breaking point with the British monarchy, helping to instigate the American Revolution. While America was trying to figure out how to be a country, the Chinese emperor decided that foreign trade was to be paid for with silver, putting a very large burden on the British East India Company. In response, they began to heavily export opium to China at the time to off-set the silver requirement, since the Chinese government did not stop the merchants from accepting opium instead of silver. Simultaneously, the British began trying to figure out how to cultivate tea in India.

At about the same time that the British had success in growing tea in the Assam region of India, 1839, the First Opium War broke out between the British and Chinese. At the start, it was estimated that the amount of opium flowing into China had increased to 40,000 chests annually from the pre-silver requirement level of 4,500 chests, prompting the Emperor to have local government officials arrest opium merchants and seize their stocks to be destroyed_{(Greenberg, 1951)}. In response, the British sent troops from India both decimating the Chinese coast and ultimately giving Britain control what is now Hong Kong.

It is the consumption of tea by the British, and later the thirst for ready-to drink and iced tea by Americans, that fueled cultivation of tea not just in India but into Africa and then South America by some of the largest tea producers in world. While China and Japan may produce more tea, this is mainly for domestic consumption rather than export.

A Brief Timeline of Tea by Dominion Tea

Since tea cannot be commercially grown in every country and it continues to be the second most consumed beverage on the planet, I suspect it will remain a factor in international relations. I can only hope that it brings more peaceful relationships in the future. Do you think it can?

Let us know by commenting here, or sharing on Twitter or Facebook.

– Hillary

Works Cited

Greenberg, M. (1951). British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-42. In M. Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-42 (p. 113). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

UK Tea Council. (2014, January 5). Tea – A Brief History of the Nation’s Favourite Beverage. Retrieved from UK Tea Council Web site: http://www.tea.co.uk/tea-a-brief-history-of-the-nations-favourite-beverage

Tea Travels: How Does Tea Get to Market?

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As we noted in an earlier blog about where tea is grown, tea comes from a large number of countries around the world, though only a relatively small number including China, India, Japan, and Kenya produce it in large scale. But we were curious, how does the tea actually get into our hands for consumption?

Tea, of course, starts with the plant, Camellia sinensis. Tea plants begin life as cuttings in a nursery before being planted in fields for commercial growing. These fields may be corporately owned or those of smallholders which makeup a substantial, if not the majority of growers around the world. (United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, 2012). After a flush of new growth appears, pluckers will pick leaves ranging from a bud only to a bud and two or three leaves, collecting the leaves in a basket or other container. While manual labor is used for most plucking, some tea is harvested by mechanical means.

After plucking, tea immediately begins to loose moisture and begin oxidation and must quickly get to a manufacturing plant. So the farm and the manufacturing plant must be close enough to allow raw leaves to be delivered immediately. Farmers rarely own manufacturing facilities themselves, so after tea is picked in the field it is carried to a factory on foot, car, truck, bicycle, or motorcycle depending on what happens to be at hand. This may be done by the farmer or by middlemen who purchase the raw tea leaves and transport it to the factory for processing.

Tea Chests by Flickr user mikecogh, CC BY-SA-2.0

Once at a factory the tea leaves are processed and turned into one of the major types of teas. This may be done using CTC or Orthodox methods, ultimately resulting in a finished tea product that is ready for packaging and sale. At this stage tea is packaged in large containers made of a variety of types including polypropylene, jute (vegetable fiber spun into threads), or paper sacks or in tea chests. Tea chests are made of plywood lined with aluminum foil and parchment paper to ensure they resist absorption of other aromas and, when full, may weigh 75-160 lbs while foil lined tea sacks may weigh 55-130 lbs. (TIS-GDV, 2013)

Depending on country and local arrangement, tea may be sold directly to distributors and wholesalers or may go through auction. There are well established auction houses in Colombo, Mombasa, Calcutta, and cities in other major tea producing countries of the world. In some cases the tea is actually packaged and leaving port before money has traded hands!

Shipping Containers by Flicker user wirralwater, CC BY-2.0

Packaged tea is shipped in a variety of methods although excessive handling is not desired as sacks and chests are easily damaged resulting in loss of the tea within. It is normally placed on pallets and then moved by forklift into a shipping container to be shipped around the world. When it gets to the destination port this container may be emptied and the contents re-shipped, or the container itself may be forwarded on to the end buyer.

Upon reaching the distributor or wholesaler the shipment of tea is then split up, sold in existing packaging, or repackaged into smaller sizes for purchase by retailers and in some cases direct to consumer. At this point some tea may become the base of a blended tea or may remain as is. Finally, the retailer will repackage the finished product into sizes that are manageable for consumers and sold directly or sold to other retailers, tea houses, or hospitality establishments.

Since tea does have a shelf life it is important to get the tea to retailers and consumers quickly. Some aspects of shipping can be done faster, especially with air shipping and consumer purchase direct from the grower. However, these are generally niche solutions with low volume, appropriate for specialty teas and buyers who really know what they want and are willing to deal with some added risk of placing orders with a company overseas.

So where do you buy your tea? Physical tea store, on-line retailer, farmers market, other?

Like what we have to say? Let us know, follow the Dominion Tea blog or follow us on Twitter or Facebook.

David @ Dominion Tea

Works Cited

TIS-GDV. (2013). Tea. Retrieved from Transport Information Services – GDV: http://www.tis-gdv.de/tis_e/ware/genuss/tee/tee.htm

United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization. (2012). Contribution of Smallholders to the tea sub-sector and policies required to enhance their livelihood. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Intergovernmental Group on Tea.

Tea Bags vs Tea Leaves Part 2: Orthodox Tea

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Last week we looked at CTC Tea manufacturing. This week look at the other major method of tea production, Orthodox. While the CTC manufacturing process is primarily focused on black tea production, the orthodox manufacturing process is used to produce a much wider variety of teas including white, yellow, and oolong as well as green and black teas. Orthodox tea production varies substantially in the actual steps used but generally features hand rolling of tea or use of a machine which mimics the hand rolling process. It does not seek to cut and tear the tea leaves into small particles used in teabags though smaller pieces can be a byproduct of orthodox production. Production by orthodox methods does not necessarily imply manufacturing by hand and many steps, including rolling can involve the use of machinery. Instead tea produced without a CTC machine is referred to as Orthodox.

After plucking and, depending on desired product, withering of the raw tea leaves, there is an initial firing to halt the oxidation. In the production of green tea one does not want oxidation so leaves are immediately steamed or fired. Black tea, on the other hand is fully oxidized so undergoes withering in order to start the oxidation process. The firing process may be accomplished in a variety of ways. Pan fried oxidation is traditional in China, while steaming is more traditional in Japan, however there are other methods of firing depending on region, and degree of industrialization of the tea manufacturing process.

Hand Rolling Tea by flickr user spinster cardigan, CC BY 2.0

The actual rolling process involves rolling the tea, breaking up the tea to separate the leaves, and rolling again. Very much like kneading dough for bread, this is repeated multiple times depending on the specific variety of tea being produced. Rolling tea causes the cells within the tea to rupture exposing them to air and allowing the liquids or sap within the leaves and stems to be released. This process helps to produce and enhance the flavor of the tea being produced and can take an hour or more when processed by hand.

Dragon Pearls

The liquid within the tea tends to be sticky and as the tea is rolled the leaves will start to stick together. As a result a step often called roll-breaking is required to break up clumps of tea leaves before it is rolled again. Regional differences and qualities of the tea being manufactured will dictate how much the leaf is rolled and special steps necessary to form specific products like Dragon Pearls, Precious Eyebrows, or other shapes. Hand rolling tea is a specialized skill handed down within families and results in unique tea products not found in other parts of the world.

Tea Rolling Table by flickr user oldandsolo, CC BY 2.0

Hand rolling of tea is time consuming and labor intensive with the resulting product more of a work of art. Production of greater quantities of orthodox teas, at lower prices, is sought through the use of rolling machines. These machines consist of a round table with ribs over which the tea is pressed and rolled in an attempt to reproduce the hand rolling process. Factories can scale production of orthodox tea quickly by adding machines rather than relying on artisans who have spent years learning to roll tea.

Orthodox manufacturing can result in a tea product in a variety of grades. Indeed the processing of tea by orthodox methods can result in fine specialty teas of whole or near-whole leaf all the way down through broken leaves as well as fannings and dust. So, just as orthodox does not necessarily imply hand processed vs mechanically processed it also does not necessarily imply crafted artisan tea vs fine grades in tea bags.

At Dominion Tea we are always curious – Do you look at your brewed tea leaves? What do you see? I enjoy finding a bud and two leaves and thinking about how they can stay attached after being rolled.

Happy Holidays!
– David & Hillary

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Tea Harvesting

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Tea Plucker in Assam by Diganta Talukdar CC-BY-2.0

For centuries the only way to harvest tea leaves was to hand pluck them, and in many countries that is still the primary means of harvest. This may be intentional or may be due to the lack of capital necessary to purchase the equipment. For those farms who chose to use modern agricultural equipment there are multiple options from which to choose that can be implemented at various points in the harvesting season. For example, in Japan, some farmers choose to hand pluck the first flush of a season and use mechanical means for subsequent harvests.

Tea does have a harvesting season, though the length and number of flushes varies widely. In China it is typically in the spring and fall. As mentioned in our earlier blog Camellia Sinensis, season is effected by water, location and temperature. During a harvesting season the tea is usually picked once every week to two weeks. In places where harvesting can occur year round, during the peak season, the tea can be picked multiple times during a week.

As you can imagine plucking tea by hand is very labor intensive work where typically, the bud and first two leaves are plucked. In regions of China, on top of plucking the tea leaves, the pluckers are hiking up and down mountainous terrain to get to the leaves. In some of the oldest farms, the pluckers are also climbing into the old ungroomed tea trees to pluck. Pluckers will carry some kind of means to collect leaves as they pluck, often a bag or bamboo basket. They will add leaves as they pluck and when full they carry their harvest back to the farm before returning to the fields to keep plucking. In many countries women make up the predominant portion of the plucking workforce. In China, this is driven by the belief that women have just the right touch in plucking leaves, not leaving the tea tree brushed or damaged at the breaking point. This is extremely important for future harvests, because the tea tree will not continue to produce leaves on a branch where it is bruised or damaged.

Tea Harvesting by Machine by Oli Studholme CC-BY-2.0

Knowing that the tea tree is sensitive to where the plucking occurs, it is hard to imagine how big farm trackers or automatic pruners could to the same job. However, the Japanese have implemented laser technology to allow their automatic pruning machines to be hand-pulled over the tea trees with cuttings sucked into either bags or shoots that go back to the main staging area for the plucked tea. This laser guidance allows the pruners to cut at just the right place and angle so the tree continues to grow from the same branch. Since oxidation begins immediately after harvest it is critical, especially for green tea, to start the manufacturing process as soon as possible and this system allows much faster transport of leaves to processing facilities. I imagine that other countries, like Sri Lanka, which are experiencing labor shortages on their tea farms as younger generations leave the farm for jobs in the cities, will eventually turn to this technology to allow harvesting to continue.

While many countries still utilize substantial labor to harvest tea, Argentina plantations almost exclusively use large elevated tractors that drive above the tea trees to harvest tea leaves. Machine harvested leaves don’t usually have the bud and two leaf combination but individual leaves instead, some with and some without stems. Given that the plantations in Argentina are able to harvest year round, it is not a surprise that they use equipment.

Mechanically harvested tea is not always destined to tea bags. Quality loose leaf tea can be harvested by machine, you will just not see a bud and two leaves in the tea. Instead you will find single leaves and buds and in some cases no stems on the leaves with an almost perfectly straight edge at the base of the leaf. As for whether plucking by hand or machine effects the quality of the end product, it is hard to imagine that it does. Of course, I am just an American that is accustomed to John Deere tractors harvesting everything from oranges to wheat, so why not tea?

by Hillary Coley

Follow me on Twitter @HillaryColey or @DominionTea

Where is Tea Grown?

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We recently attended a tasting session featuring teas from around the world. The teas were outstanding to be sure, however, they represented teas from only a small portion of the world. The countries represented included China, Japan, Tibet, India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya and provided a very diverse set of teas. These included white, yellow, green, black, dark, and even purple teas. But our tasting from “around the world” barely even scratched the surface. There are a huge number of countries growing teas. In fact, more than 50 countries grow tea today including many from Asia, a good number from Africa, and some perhaps surprising locations like former Russian states, Iran, Argentina, Brazil, and yes, even the United States, though not always at a high enough to be globally competitive. While the top four growers (China, India, Sri Lanka, and Kenya) far and away surpass the others, tea production is very much a global business. The average American consumer tea is most likely from China, India, Sri Lanka, or Kenya. However, to illustrate just how global the business is, a somewhat dated report by the U.S. Department of Labor noted in 1996 that Germany, which grows virtually no tea, has consistently been one of the top countries supplying tea to the US market_{(Department of Labor, n.d.)}!

China and India account for 55% of global tea production.

Countries grouped by relative global share of tea production. Based on 2011 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data. http://www.fao.org/statistics.en/ (Full Tableau Visualization)

Tea as a Global Commodity

Tea is the second most consumed drink in the world, behind water, and demand continues to grow year after year. While tea is consumed in the form of loose leaf, bagged tea, and chai, innovations in ready to drink teas, and powdered tea drinks in Asia continue to drive additional growth. One of the fastest growing segments in Asia, according to Euromonitor ^{(Friend, 2013)}, is the powered tea segment with products like Xiang Piao Piao, which is a single serve cup of instant powered tea in a variety of sweetened flavors. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Group on Tea, demand for black tea has exceeded supply since 2009. This long term demand is expected to keep the price of tea high for years to come _{(United Nations, 2012)}.

Photo of Coffee Rust – by Carvalho et al – CC-BY-SA 2.5

Where demand exceeds supply the price generally stays high until supply rises enough to meet that demand so it is reasonable to expect that more countries will see commercial tea planned and those already in the business may increase both the land area under cultivation and work to improve the yield of existing plantations. Additionally, some coffee plantations may choose to change over to tea. This is because coffee rust is increasingly impacting coffee plantations in South America and pushing down coffee production rates. Rust isn’t actually new, it’s what drove Sri Lanka to switch from growing coffee to tea back in the mid to late 1800’s. However, it is now impacting South America, parts of which are seeing the worst outbreaks of coffee rust since it took hold in the 1970’s. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expecting significant decline in crop yields for the 2013-14 season on top of already significant declines in 2012-13 _{(U.S. Departement of State, n.d.)}

Given the growing appreciation and demand for ready-to-drink products and specialty teas in the United States, Canada, and other parts of the world we may very well have increased opportunity to experience an even wider variety of tea products from a wide variety of countries in the years to come.

[ See Related Post: Tea vs Coffee Imports – Who are the superpowers? ]

Works Cited
Department of Labor. (n.d.). ILAB – TEA. Retrieved from Bureau of International Labor Affairs: http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/sweat4/tea.htm

Friend, J. F. (2013). Global Tea Opportunities in Retail and Foodservice. World Tea East. Atlanta: Euromonitor.

U.S. Departement of State. (n.d.). Retrieved from Coffee Rust Outbreak in Central America, Southern Mexico, and the Caribbean: http://www.state.gov/e/eb/tpp/abt/coffee/index.htm

United Nations. (2012, February 29). UN News Centre. Retrieved from Global tea prices set to stay strong this year, says UN agency: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp/story.asp?NewsID=41411&Cr=Food+Prices&Cr1=#.UoS9i94o601