By Lisa Cam

 

What goes in your morning cuppa? A lot more than you think.

If your brew is from Sri Lanka, the process of growing tea, harvesting the leaves and producing tea bags is surprisingly labour-intensive.

With a land area of 65,610 sq km (25,000 square miles), the country is responsible for almost 12% of all exports of tea and related products, according to the Sri Lanka Export Development Board.

One of the country’s prime tea-growing areas is Bogawantalawa.

“The soil is very rich in nutrients that are perfect for the tea,” says Dinesh De Silva, the naturalist at Teardrop Hotels’ boutique hotel Camellia Hills. “The tea industry makes a lot of money in this area, so that’s the main reason we call this area the Golden Valley.

“And also there’s another name … Bogo means ‘god’ and talawa means ‘valley’ or ‘land’. So [Bogawantalawa] is the ‘land of God’.”

Sri Lanka was once a prominent coffee producer, but faced a devastating blow in the late 19th century when coffee rust (Hemileia vastatrix), a fungal disease, decimated its coffee plantations, according to De Silva.

This catastrophe forced a dramatic shift in the island’s agriculture. Recognizing the potential of the terrain and climate for tea cultivation, Scottish planter James Taylor began experimenting with tea plants.

The success of these trials led to a rapid transition, and Sri Lanka became a leading tea producer, transforming its economy. The island became synonymous with Ceylon tea, known for its high quality. Ceylon is the historical name of Sri Lanka, and the one initially used at independence from Britain in 1948.

There are very few pests or diseases in Sri Lanka that affect tea leaves. This makes tea one of the most desirable products to grow there.

At the Bogawantalawa Tea Estate in the valley of the same name, tea leaves are still plucked by hand despite advancements in harvesting technology may come as a surprise.

“We are still doing the hand-picking because when you do it by hand, you can selectively pluck. If you use a machine to pluck, it will cut. It is almost like cutting a hedge. Anything that comes up will be taken out,” says Buddika Weerasekera, tea master at the estate.

“When it goes through the manufacturing process, it gives you more fibre content because of these stems. More fibre means the quality of the product comes down.”

By tradition, tea picking is done mostly by women. They carry a basket strapped to their heads which can hold up to 10kg (22lbs) of leaves.

They need to pluck at least 20kg of leaves to receive their wage at the end of the day, and there are incentives that encourage them to pick more. It takes two to three hours for an experienced plucker to pick a full basket’s worth of tea leaves, and four hours at most.

After the leaves are plucked, they are collated and withered overnight to lower the water content. Then industrial-sized rolling machines gently break down the structure of the leaves. The leaves are then ground slightly and left to ferment.

This process is only necessary for fermented products like black tea or oolong tea; green tea does not need to be fermented.

Following the fermentation process, the tea is dried and sorted into different grades and levels of fineness for auction. By this point, the tea is ready to be brewed and drunk.

However, there is an entire process before these teas become the tea bags you see at home: the blending process.

Samples are drawn and sent for tasting and evaluation to buyers, who then bid on the lots that meet their quality and price requirements.

The auction is dynamic, with brokers representing estates and buyers vying for the best teas. Once a bid is accepted, the tea is allocated to the buyer, packaged and prepared for shipment.

While estates like Bogawantalawa have their own tea blends, they – like other estates – also produce blends for brands, and package them to be shipped around the world.

At the Bogawantalawa tea centre in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, small boxes of tea samples line almost every surface.

Weerasekera says the tea masters will taste every single one of them, and may taste up to 2,000 samples in a single day. The way the tea masters do this can only be described as speed tasting.

“What we do is we slurp the tea sample with a spoon and spit it out in a bucket. With our experience, we understand as soon as we slurp the tea in,” Weerasekera says.

“We first go for the cup colour … visually. Then we go for the brightness of the cup, whether there are any tints or contaminations with other materials. So those kinds of stuff will be marked on the catalogues. It needs experience.”

The flavours of the tea can change drastically in the course of a year, even if the leaves come from the same terroir. This is why tea masters have to taste so many samples every day and adjust blends to ensure the cups you brew at home taste good all year round.

With the abundance of high-quality tea right on their doorstep, many chefs in Sri Lanka are incorporating the ingredients in their dishes.

“We want to infuse Sri Lankan tea into the food,” says Sumudu Kadawata, group executive chef of Teardrop Hotels, where 80% of the ingredients are sourced locally.

“So we balanced the spices and the ingredients to bring up the tea flavour to the front. Locally, people are only having tea when they are drinking. But we want to bring some kind of new experience to our clients with the flavours of the tea,” he adds.

For one of his starters at Camellia Hills, Kadawata has prepared seared tuna crusted with silver-tip tea. “For the tuna dish, we use one of the most expensive tea leaves in Sri Lanka,” Kadawata says.

“So we balance the flavour with a little bit of mango purée because it is a kind of locally grown fruit. And then we have some fresh vegetable salad just to refresh your mouth.”

The tea flavour enhances the steely flavour of the tuna on the back of the palate, bringing the strongest characteristic of the fish forward.

The highlight of Camellia Hills’ tea menu is the fish cooked with tea pesto.

“This dish came to my mind while I was travelling around the Bogawantalawa tea plantation to create something from this region,” Kadawata says. “I chose the Bogawantalawa oolong tea to create a kind of pesto because it is a nice fruity flavour to balance the strong fish flavour.”

The menu features other creative dishes, such as beef steak marinated with black tea, or the vegetarian-friendly grilled pumpkin seasoned with cinnamon tea – Sri Lanka is also the world’s largest producer of cinnamon.

With a standard tea bag costing around 10 US cents, it can be hard to picture the human capital expended in cultivating, plucking, processing, tasting and blending before the tea hits your lips.

Make sure you savour every sip of your next brew.

-Lisa is the host and producer of SCMP’s Eat Drink Asia video series and enjoys reporting all things about food, travel and anything in between, This article was originally featured on SCMP