Transforming Freshly Picked Tea Leaves into Finished Iron Goddess of Mercy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea
Part I:
Picking, Withering, Tumbling, and Oxidation
After hand-picking the teas, tea producers bring their fresh leaves to wither under the sun usually on a platform or driveway outside their homes.
During peak harvest season in any tea producing area, you will see tea growers and tea producers lining all the country roads with withering tea.
Basically, everyone is looking for a patch of sunlight to wither the teas and start wilting the leaves and extracting moisture.
Next, teas are sorted into stacked bamboo trays for oxidation in a controlled environment. Most small-scale producers (like the Wang Family we work with) have a special room with air conditioning to control the temperature of the environment where the oxidation happens. To me, this room usually smells like fresh green bananas.
If you remember from our earlier post, what distinguishes oolong teas from other categories of tea is partial oxidation (e.g. green tea is not un-oxidized, and black tea is almost fully oxidized).
The next step is tumbling these oxidizing leaves in a bamboo cylinder to bruise the edges of the tea leaf. This is one of the most crucial and unique steps of Iron Goddess of Mercy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea processing.
Bruising the edges of the tea leaf breaks the tea leaf’s cells and causes more dramatic oxidization on the edges of the leaf. If you smell the leaves before and after the tumbling step, you will notice a dramatic change in their fragrance.
Part I Recap
Step 1:
Handpick tea leaves from tea bushes
Step 2:
Wither leaves under the sun
Step 3:
Stack leaves in bamboo trays for controlled oxidation
Step 4:
Tumbling to bruise edges and release aroma
Step 5:
Repeat steps 3 and 4 as many times as needed responding to the day’s humidity and temperature and desired outcome of flavor
Part II:
Firing the Tea, Slapping the Tea, and Sifting Out Tea Dust
To halt the oxidation of the tea leaves, the leaves on the bamboo trays are “fired” which means essentially roasted quickly with heat to stop the oxidation process.
After completing Part I and before we went to sleep, the Wang family told us they were going to pick up the process the next morning at 4am. We were eager to see the process, but at the same time 4am is SO EARLY–we were non-committal and collapsed into sleep upstairs.
The next morning at around 4am, we were awaken by a few repeated loud slamming sounds. I can usually sleep through anything, but this happened every 7 min or so. Combined with the amazing singular aroma of freshly roasted Iron Goddess of Mercy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea permeating the air, it was difficult to sleep.
So we stumbled downstairs and looked on as Mr. and Mrs. Wang continued where they left off to finish crafting this batch of Iron Goddess of Mercy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea)…at 4am (that photo of us chilling in pink plastic chairs is us hanging in our pajamas in the workshop at 4am).
Mrs. Wang would wheel over the stacked trays of oxidized tea leaves from the controlled temperature room to the roaster. As you can see in the photo of me holding the tea leaf, the edges of the leaf are more red.
Remember we said tumbling the leaves was to bruise the edges and encourage greater oxidation on the edges? This is what the end result of that process looks like.
To halt the oxidation of the tea leaves, the leaves on the bamboo trays are “fired” which means essentially roasted quickly with heat to stop the oxidation process.
Remember, producing great quality tea is all about expert and artful control of oxidation by applying heat and controlling humidity/water content in the tea leaf.
The next step after these leaves have been heated to stop the oxidation process is to gather them in a cloth, wrap it in a ball, attach it to a medieval looking catapult and strategically slam the cloth around.
I know that sounds really weird, but what is happening is what the locals call “getting rid of the red edges.” This is to get rid of the more oxidized red-edges of the leaf. The slamming essentially crumbles and smashes these more delicate edges.
This is also a loud step (the one that woke us up).
Then you sift the tea with a bamboo sifter to make sure all those crumbled red edges are no longer part of the batch, let the leaves rest in a pile, and we are ready for Part III
Part II Recap
Step 6:
Fire the tea to halt oxidation
Step 7:
Slam the fired tea to get rid of the red oxidized edges
Step 8:
Sift out tea dust (which is mostly those red edges)
Part III:
Shaping Leaves, Finishing the Tea, and Hand-Plucking Stems Off
Instead of rolling the tea into a tight ball and rolling and rolling to shape the leaves, the latest in tea machinery technology to hit the village is a new machine that applies pressure from four sides to achieve the same result.
After gathering the pile of tea leaves at the completion of Part II, Mr. Wang hopped on his motorcycle and zipped off.
Where was he going? Wasn’t he going to shape the leaves here like they did last year?
Mrs. Wang told us Mr. Wang went to a neighbor’s to use their new tea shaping machine.
There’s a new machine in town!
Instead of rolling the tea into a tight ball and rolling and rolling to shape the leaves, the latest in tea machinery technology to hit the village is a new machine that applies pressure from four sides to achieve the same result.
Since the machine is rather expensive, the Wang’s decided to rent use of their neighbor’s this year instead of buying their own.
We walked through the village with Mrs. Wang to the neighbor’s workshop to watch Mr. Wang complete the process of handcrafting Iron Goddess of Mercy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea.
Shaping the leaves in the machine is important to break the cells and make the tea leaves more tender as well as give the finished tea leaf Iron Goddess of Mercy Tieguanyin Oolong Tea its distinctive rolled ball shape.
Each turn in the shaping machine is interspersed with a whirl in the roaster to get rid of moisture. Knowing how many times and how long to roast in between each shaping, is decided upon each craftsman in response to the moisture level in the tea.
Once we achieve the desired shape and moisture level, the leaves are finished with a final firing to seal the entire process.
The last and final step is hand sorting and plucking the stems off so that the finished tea is only tea leaves. That’s right, each tea ball is hand plucked off the stem!
Part III Recap
Step 9:
Shape the leaves into tiny balls break the cells to make tea more tender and give it the distinctive round shape
Step 10:
Roast to get rid of moisture (repeat steps 9 and 10 as many times as necessary)
Step 11:
Finish the leaves with a final firing
Step 12: