During April and May, green tea farms spread a beautiful fresh green colour. You can admire this beautiful scenery only in the first flush tea season.
Spring normally indicates a new start, however, it is a grand finale for tea farmers.
It takes between 4 and 8 years for a young tea plant to grow and get plucked. Tea trees are quite delicate and high maintenance as they are vulnerable to cold, hate dry climate and attract many insects and weeds with their tasty leaves. Especially frost gives a critical damage to tea trees. Therefore tea farmers are always alert to weather. They cover blanket on all over the tea farm to prevent damages from frost. Needless to say, protecting the precious tea leaves from hungry insects and weeds.
After the all the effort, tea trees are finally ready to be plucked.
However this is only first part, in fact, it’s the beginning of the journey for green tea to be delivered to your home. The plucked tea leaves now goes to tea factories for the primary processing which is heated, steamed, rolled, dried and packaged. Then the green tea travels to tea markets and passed to tea manufactures where there are 茶師 (chashi), green tea masters. Once the tea leaves get selected, blended and wilted by chashi, finally sent to shops. Your home is the final destination for green tea. The green tea at your home went through such a long journey.
Green tea deserves to be in a beautiful teapot, taken with your favourite tea cup and appreciated as a reward!
