Black tea is made in four stages: withering, rolling, oxidisation, and firing.
1) Withering
· Freshly picked leaves are spread out on long troughs, or in round bamboo frames, or on canvas beds, and left to wilt for many hours.
· The withering time varies by leaf, season, maker, and tea garden
· The leaf loses moisture and becomes supple enough to roll.
· Withering is not a passive step: experienced tea masters make careful decisions about airflow, temperature, and timing that shape everything that follows.
2) Rolling
· Done either by hand, with rollers that mimic the motion of two hands, or vast industrial machines.
· Rolling breaks the cell walls and releases the enzymes that drive oxidation.
· This begins the transformation of the leaf
· The pressure, speed, and duration all affect the finished tea and how it infuses.
3) Oxidisation
· The rolled leaf darkens as it reacts with oxygen, moving from green through copper to the deep brown-black of a finished black tea.
· Oxidisation is where catechins convert into the theaflavins and thearubigins that define black tea’s character.
4) Firing
· High heat halts the leaf’s oxidisation.
· Firing fixes the tea’s character, and dries the leaf.
· This final stage is done in several different ways, and the skill applied here is one of the great distinctions between an extraordinary black tea and an ordinary one.
Although all black teas follow these essential steps, there is a huge variation in the way they are made.
All of Rare Tea Company’s black teas are:
· Grown, harvested and crafted by farmers we have visited.
· Teas are crafted in small batches to bring out the incredible flavours unique to their terroirs.
· All our black teas are loose leaf and grown under organic farming practices.
What you might find in a teabag is generally the industrial product of machines. The leaf goes in one end and comes out the other in a bag - with little to no human skill or care involved.
