Making Oolong

I was just reading another great article in my Tea & Coffee trade mag about the making of tea. It is amazing the amount of human labor that goes in to making tea - good or bad - and what a great deal we get when we buy it! Making really good tea is very labor intensive and takes a great deal of knowledge to do it right. When you see some of the higher quality teas going for upwards of $250 per kilo, it has a great deal to do with the process, not just the flavor and aroma.


Oolong is considered the fussiest of teas to produce. Here is a quick lesson in how a tea is catagorized: green and (most) white teas are not oxidized; black teas are fully oxidized. Oolongs fall in the middle and are only partially oxidized - this is where the skill is needed to know when the tea is at the right oxidation stage.

The process of making the tea goes something like this:
1] leaves are plucked and scattered over large flat basket trays to wither a bit
2] leaves are tossed BY HAND to "bruise" the edges. The amount of bruising is important; too much and you expose too much of the leaf to oxidation. There are several resting periods between tosses. This part of the process can take 7 hours or more!
3] the leaves then go into a bamboo rolling tumbler for more bruising. This is when the experts come in to check on the amount of bruising to determine if the leaves are ready for the next step. Now we're talking 16 hours into the process.
4] more resting for the leaves (and workers, I imagine).
5] now the leaves are ready to be dried - this stops the oxidation process - and about 50% of the moisture has been removed. This is the rolling stage.

More sorting and stabilizing happens until it is finally stable and ready for drinking. A very long and involved process!


Picture this: One person in one day plucks 12 - 15 kilograms of fresh leaves; five kilos of fresh leaves make one kilo of finished oolong; 10 kilos of withered tea gets two and a half kilos of tea to the rolling stage. (1 Kilo is just over 35 ounces; that will make about 450 cups at the American taste level - i.e. weaker than most Asian drinkers.) And remember, most of the pluckers are women!

Enjoy your next cup of tea!
Deb