Jack McCausland

Photography, Graphic Design, Media

Tea goes right back to 2737 B.C where a Chinese Emperor was served a cup of boiling water, that had a dry leaf in it, of which had fallen off a tree. The idea of such a drink, spread across the world, and in it’s own time, became a whole other drink.

A man called Peter Stuyvesant was known to bring back the first tea from China, into the United States in 1650. After a while, in 1904, Americans came up with the idea of having iced tea, and this shortly became a popular drink. 1904 was a time of which tea was first coming about in the way we know about it. In this era, teabags made their appearance in the commercial world, and was on the shelves, sold as the tea we know today.

HOW IS TEA MADE?

On paper, the production of tea, start to finish, seems quite straight forward. Vast range of flavours, many bushes, one plant.

I looked into the procution of tea and the different techniques to get a clearer idea on the thought of tea, and how it comes about, right from the word, GrOw.

Step one : Harvesting / plucking

write from the begining, the flavour or type of tea depends on when it's picked, and how. Some tea require the buds to be picked early on, opposed to leaving it to grow a little bit, until the bud as properly developed.

The harvesting method is all done by hand, as this can not be done by machine, as it requires to be viewed, judged on weather it's ready of not, and picked, plany by plant.

Step two: Withering

This is were the tea leaves are left for several hours for them to 'dry out'. Without this process, when proceding onto other steps in the process, the tea leaves have a chance of crumbling, or will shatter.

Step three: Rolling

Rolling is the first step which splits key flavours apart. This is the technique which can provide lots of different vairiables when tasting the chosen tea.

This is where the dried leaves are rolled, pressed or twisted to 'break' the cells walls, which allows the process of oxidation.

Step four: Oxidation

Oxidation is where the tea leaves are left out to air. The interaction of oxygen brings out the flavours of the tea, the longer the leaves are left to do so, the stonger; the quicker, the weaker. This is a big vairiable when creating a certain tast or flavour. The current tempetures and conditions during that time also effect the lenght of this process.

Step five: Firing

Lastely, but not least, firing is the technique which will dry them quickly, stopping the leaves of oxidating. The prefered level of moisture is around 3%, this enables the tea to be stored for a long period of time, and also them, easy to drink when you add the moisture back in (boiling a kettle at home).