Is good tea necessarily hand picked tea?

Is hand picking tea necessarily better?

Is the quality of machine picked tea necessarily inferior to hand picked tea?

In fact, hand picked tea and machine picked tea each have their own advantages and disadvantages, as well as their own historical origins.

In the early days, the rural labor force was sufficient, and all tea was harvested manually. Machine harvesting operations began in the 1970s in the peach, bamboo, and seedling tea region, which is mainly focused on export.

In the 1980s, the migration of rural population and the emergence of family style contract factories led to a shortage of manpower during the tea harvesting season, so machine harvesting was used to solve the problem of labor shortage.

In the era of manual harvesting, high-quality tea leaves were often sold under the trademark of frozen top oolong tea, and their quality was not inferior to frozen top tea.

But when we began to replace manual harvesting with machine harvesting, although we solved the problem of labor shortage, due to insufficient supporting measures, tea prices plummeted.

The quality of machine picked tea is gradually improving, and manual picking can visually determine the different growth positions of tea buds, so the proportion of old or broken leaves picked is relatively small; However, machines do not have this function, and the proportion of tea buds harvested varies in length and maturity compared to hand picked tea leaves.

Early tea trees were harvested by machines without proper pruning, resulting in uneven and poor quality raw materials. Later, with the advancement of cultivation and harvesting techniques, the quality of machine picked tea was greatly improved through mechanical screening and branch picking.

Machine picked tea leaves often surpass hand picked tea leaves in quality. Nowadays, in most tea gardens, about 80% of tea leaves are harvested by machines. Machine picked tea not only surpasses hand picked tea in terms of quality, but also surpasses hand picked tea in wholesale and retail markets in terms of price.

According to the characteristics of tea tree evapotranspiration, fresh leaves harvested between 11am and 3pm have the lowest moisture content in tea leaves. The ‘midday dishes’ referred to by tea farmers refer to fresh leaf materials picked from 11am to 1pm in the afternoon.

‘Er Wu Cai’ refers to the fresh leaf raw materials for the second round of tea harvesting after noon. Based on the current management method of tea farmers’ tea harvesting, it usually takes place from 1 pm to 3 pm in the afternoon. Both “midday dishes” and “second noon dishes” have relatively low moisture content and are suitable for producing high-end products.

When the “noon vegetables” are harvested and transported to the factory for sun withering, the sunlight is still strong, so the withering process needs to be careful, otherwise the tea leaves are prone to excessive withering; During the sun drying period of “Er Wu Cai”, the sunlight is relatively gentle, which distinguishes it from “noon dishes” in terms of operation and is easy to master.

It often gets foggy in the afternoon in high mountain areas, so the tea leaves that enter the factory at three o’clock often wither due to unfavorable weather conditions.

After fresh leaves leave the tree, they lose the water supply from the soil, and the changes in their water content are determined by factors such as daily radiation intensity, temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed.

Sunlight withering, also known as “sun drying”, is a saying that goes, “Look at the sun drying, look at the sky drying”, because different tea tree varieties have corresponding sun drying methods for tea maturity and climatic conditions.

Under conditions of high relative humidity, thick clouds, low temperature, and no wind, the transpiration of leaves is not vigorous, making it difficult to achieve an appropriate degree of withering. How to overcome unfavorable weather conditions in tea making tests the wisdom and patience of tea makers.

In the case of insufficient tea picking manpower, it is difficult to manually pick tea leaves during periods of low moisture content. It is not uncommon to pick tea leaves in high mountain tea areas before the dew dries or on rainy days.

In the early days, most tea growing areas relied on manual tea picking, and in mid to high altitude tea growing areas, only the single variety of Qingxin Oolong was cultivated. In areas with similar production conditions, the timing of spring bud germination and harvesting overlapped.

Spring is the season with the highest tea production in a year. In the case of unstable climate (rainy) and insufficient number of tea pickers, the maturity of spring tea picking is often insufficient, resulting in bitter tea soup and low aroma.

The number of tea leaves that can be harvested per hour by each machine of machine tea picking is at least equivalent to 100 experienced tea pickers. Due to its fast speed, it is possible to choose the best time to pick tea, which greatly increases the probability of producing high-quality products.

If machine harvesting is used during the peak season, it can avoid missing the best time required for producing semi fermented tea due to the scheduling of tea pickers. It can also avoid making tea in poor weather conditions, greatly improving the quality of tea and increasing the income of tea farmers, so that consumers can also drink better and more affordable tea.