The habit of drinking tea has become very popular across the globe. People who have been keeping away from this habit have also endorsed tea for its many health benefits. The delighting varieties of tea are reason enough to love this beverage, more so because your health is threatened by increasing number of factors.
Divine Tea and Its Making
It’s a heavenly beverage that most people love to romance with. However, the process of its production is even more interesting and a sure delight for tea connoisseurs. It starts right from the boutique tea gardens on the hills across eastern, northern and even southern India. Darjeeling is the paradise when it comes to tea production and exotic tea estates.
Skilled men and particularly women are engaged for handpicking tea leaves. It’s a sight to behold and a non-negotiable experience. Six different varieties of tea could be made from the production of a single tea plant which includes white tea, green tea, yellow tea, common black tea, oolong tea and a post-fermented tea. Now these different types of tea could be further broken down to develop other types depending on their styles of modifications during tea processing. Before you buy authentic Indian tea online, know-how of these details would help you to make a more suitable choice. There are about two to seven stages of tea production, inclusion or exclusion of any of these stages in production leads to the formation of different varieties of tea. All of these processes take place under controlled temperature to prevent climatic conditions from interfering with the process and restore its authentic taste and qualities. Let’s take a look at the procedures.
- Withering: Tea leaves have substantial amount of locked moisture which needs to be done away with. So freshly hand-plucked tea leaves are allowed to wilt. They are spread out in a series of troughs and hot air from beneath the troughs dries them up. The longer they are dried the strong its flavour and caffeine intensity becomes. Green tea is exposed to the troughs for shorter time to retain their innate flavours and green texture and low caffeine content.
- Fixing: In this process browning of tea leaves by enzymes of the wilted leaves are controlled by applying heat either by heated tumblers or steaming, or baking, or pan frying. Tea leaves with a strong aroma takes more time to be fixed while green and yellow tea are fixed by just steaming. This is why they retain their vegetal and raw green taste.
- Oxidation: During this process the tea leaves are exposed to oxygen and as a result the chemical reactions take place in the volatile compounds in tea leaves. They turn brown in colour and rough in texture. The tea leaves gain a very intense aroma and flavours due to this process.
- Rolling: The tea fixed tea leaves are rolled and given specific shapes according to their styles. While rolling the leaves lose essential oils and sap. This intensifies the taste.
- Drying: Even after all these processes tea leaves may have some moisture content in them, especially tea leaves which skip some of these process. So to increase their shelf life, tea leaves are roasted at a low temperature for a specific time to ensure only remaining moisture is dried out.
Buy Darjeeling First Flush, a special variety of tea from premiere single tea estate in the heaven for tea, to experience the tea magic.
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