Very High Tea

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This morning we checked out of our hotel early and stored our bags with the front desk to pick up again before we caught the bus back to Kuala Lumpur in the afternoon. Our main goal for the day was to see the BOH Palas Tea Plantation and Factory and to purchase some world class tea.

The tea plantation is actually in Brinchang, the town next to Tanah Rata where we spent the night, so we hired the same taxi driver we got yesterday to take us to the plantation. He was a great driver to hire because both his grandfather and father worked on the plantation as tea pickers. Our taxi driver was able to teach us a lot about the tea process because he knew it first hand - he grew up as a kid on this very plantation!

The plantation we visited, was the Palas plantation, and it is actually small as far as tea plantations go - it's about 250 hectares. In total about 60 people work on the plantation including about 40-50 pickers, the factory workers and the tea tasting and shop workers. The pickers all live on the plantation with their families (the others may too, but we aren't sure), in a series of duplexes. Included in their compensation is free living, medical and dental care on site, as well as a local religious chapel to serve them. Actually there are three religious facilities right on the plantation: a Hindu temple, a mosque and a church. The pickers are paid based on the weight of the tea they pick, and the overall pay is pretty low - our driver said it is about 1,200 Malaysian Ringgits ($400 CAD), but they do get pretty good benefits in terms of the living facilities. All the pickers work Monday - Saturday and get Sundays off. The tea factory workers work Tuesday to Sunday and get Monday off. It's a pretty clever schedule because the tea that is picked on Saturday can be processed in the factory on Sunday. Since no tea is picked on Sunday, the factory has nothing to do on Monday.

On our way up the driveway into the tea plantation, our driver noticed a set of picking baskets on the side of the road, so we stopped and tried them out. There was also a set of clippers there. We each took our turn trying them on for size. The clippers are basically just regular shears for trimming a hedge, but they have a plastic basket attached to the top with half the basket on each blade. When the picker uses the shears to cut the tea plant, the shears automatically catch the leaves that were cut in the plastic basket. The picker then dumps the shears over their shoulder so the tea leaves land in the wicker basket that is on their back. When the basket on their back is full they empty it into large sacks that weigh about 50 or 60 kg when full.

The tea plants are short bonsai like bushes. If left untrimmed they actually grow into large trees that look something like a poplar tree. Of course, the tea plantations don't want that because they would be very hard to pick! The plants live for many years - all of the plants here in Malaysia came from Sri Lanka and they were about 150 years old when they were moved from Sri Lanka. Some of the plants have been here for 80 years which makes the tea plants up to 230 years old!

The trimming of the tea plants works in cycles. Each plant will be trimmed every three weeks. To facilitate this, the plantation is organized into a series of blocks, and they are trimmed on a schedule. Every three years, a plant is pruned. They have to be pruned or they will go to flower. If they flower, the plant will put too much energy into the flowers and not enough into the tea leaves. The other reason to prune the plant is to keep them short. If they are left unpruned, the will eventually become too tall to pick. After pruning, the plant needs about four months to grow new leaves and to recover before it can be picked again. (When they are pruned, they are literally hacked way back - all the leaves are cut completely off).

The picked tea leaves are taken to the factory and moved to the upper floors and placed in large troughs with built-in fans. They blow air for about 24 hours over the leaves. This process takes about 50% of the moisture from the leaves and makes them soft and supple. On a good day, about 10 tonnes of tea leaves will be harvested. That will turn into about 2 tonnes of finished tea.

The second phase of the process is to grind the leaves up. The leaves are ground in a machine for about twenty minutes and then reground if they aren't fine enough. They are then laid out on large racks to oxidize. The oxidation process is actually very important for making black tea. Apparently, that is the difference between green tea and black tea - green tea is not oxidized. Before the oxidation process the leaves are brown in colour (they are green when picked but turn brown because little bits of the stems are left in and they make the whole batch brown). The oxidation process makes the whole batch turn to black.

After they are left on the trays for about 3-4 hours, they are put into a drying machine. The dryer runs at 100 degrees Celsius and the heat comes from burning rubber tree wood. Apparently rubber tree wood is used because this gives the tea a good flavour.

Finally, the tea has to be sorted. The youngest leaves - newly opened leaves - make the first grade tea. The second youngest make second grade tea and the third oldest make the third grade tea. The older the leaf, the stronger the flavour. The newest shoots make the finest tea. At the BOH plantation, the teas are called: BOH Palas Supreme (this is the newest shoots and the finest quality tea), BOH Cameronian Gold (this is first grade tea), BOH Tea (second grade) and BOH Tiger Tea (third grade).

As an outsider to the tea making process, you would think it is important to sort the leaves out before processing in order to get the grades sorted out separately. But, the tea experts have figured out that this isn't necessary. Instead, what they do is process everything together all at once and then sort the tea out at the end. This is done by placing the tea on vibrating screening trays which sorts out the different sized bits of tea leaf. As it turns out, the different sizes of tea leaves are correlated to the age of the leaves. The finer the bits of leaf, the younger the leaf. This works because in the grinding stage (the first stage), younger leaves grind into smaller bits. Older leaves are courser and more stiff, and so they won't grind down to the same sizes as the younger leaves.

After our visit to the factory, we headed out to the tea cafe and did some sampling. We tried a Palas Supreme and a Cameronian Gold. Both were delicious, and they were made more exquisite by our surroundings. You see, we were out on the veranda of the cafe overhanging the tea plantation. On three sides you looked out into the rolling hills of the Cameron Highlands and saw they finely manicured tea plants. Definitely a Kodak moment.

After drinking our tea, we thought we better visit the shop and buy some. Expensive by Malaysian standards, the finest Palas Supremen tea runs about 16 Ringgits per 100 grams. That's about $5.33 /100 grams. In Toronto, at the tea shop we normally go to, 100 grams of tea will run you at least twice that price. The first grade BOH Cameronian Gold tea cost about 11 Ringitts per 150 grams, which is about $2.50 per 100 grams. Definitely a bargain.

Malaysia is a tea drinking nation. This comes from the heavy British influence left over from colonial times. Apparently, the average person consumes about half a kilo of tea a year, which means that despite the large domestic production of tea, Malaysia is a net importer of tea. All in all, from the BOH plantation we visited, about 80% of the tea is sold to domestic markets and 20% is exported to Brunei and Singapore. None for Canada!

After finishing up our visit to the tea plantation, we headed back to Tanah Rata for lunch and to catch our bus. We decided to try out a 'Steamboat' for lunch. The restaurant gives you a hot plate and a large vat of soup. You use the soup to cook a variety of seafood, meat and vegetables that they bring. Unfortunately, it was tough to tell what was the seafood from the vegetables so Elysia didn't enjoy it that much. Mike didn't enjoy it that much either, because some of the seafood was very fishy tasting and generally not that good. Oh well, we tried it and can now check it off our list!

In the late afternoon we caught the bus back to Kuala Lumpur. Things went a lot more smoothly than yesterday, in the sense that the bus actually had our reservation and let us on! We also made it to Kuala Lumpur on time and got to our hotel without incidence. The only trip up was on the bus itself. It seems the guy sitting across the aisle from Mike liked to talk… a lot. And he talked about weird things. For instance, apparently there is this guy who has developed mathematical equations that all of the world's computers cannot solve combined, but that this guy can use. He has used them to reinterpret parts of the Bible and his work will be published soon. Also, all of the world's governments are apparently conspiring to keep news of the 'real' radioactivity from Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant meltdown a secret. Apparently, BC residents should be expecting to go belly up any day now. And lastly, this guy asked us where we were from. We said, "Canada." He replied, "Me too!" But he had a really strong US accent and then, over the course of the four hour conversation it became clear that he moved to Canada about three years before coming to South East Asia, and was really a US citizen. Not sure why he couldn't just tell us that! So it made for an interesting bus ride, but Mike had to work really hard to not roll his eyes continuously at this guy!

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Photos

Step 2: Rolling the Leaves
Step 1 was letting the tea dry out for a day.

Step 3: Fermentation
To get the tea ready to ferment, it goes down this conveyer and onto large trays.

Step 3: Fermentation
The tea is fermenting on these trays. This is the difference between green and black tea. Green tea does not go through this fermentation process.

Step 6: Buying!
That's why you come here!