Harvest

Piling on the tea train

[In case you've read last year's account, this may be slightly redundant. Hope you can enjoy the photos, anyway! ^_^ ]

It's difficult to say that one one part of the tea making process is any more or less important than any other but it certainly all starts with the harvest. Obviously, you can't make good tea without good leaves.

This late in the short tea-picking season is "Jung Jak" (Korean name of the third flush, but not literally "third flush"), so we pick just the bud with one leaf. The bud holds the sweetness and the leaf adds the bitter taste, the two basic characteristics of nearly every tea. The second leaf would over power the delicate balance and the taste would not taste good.

The harvest is the more grueling part of the process, hunched over the hot sun, scouring the bushes for tender buds. I keep wanting to take a break, but I know the more I pick the more tea I'll have to bring home. I do take a moment to enjoy a few deep breaths of the fresh mountain air now and then and take in the view of Jiri Mountain from this 700 meter foothill. I especially enjoy rustling the leaves in the bag and sticking my nose in for a deep whiff. Like sugar-snap pea pods mixed with a touch of citronella.

The bag fills slowly with the small buds and leaves. My arms have begun to burn in the hot sun and are quite uncomfortable, so I move to a patch of bushes beneath the shade of a large persimmon tree, a few rows down the slope. The others stayed above, near the top, so there are many decent buds here to pluck. Not long after, Prof Ahn calls out that we've done enough and we take turns piling onto the little carts to bring us back to the workshop to start the roasting process.

A perfect bud and leaf for "Jung Jak"

Riding up the slope

Through the bushes

At the top

Buchun Dawon "Unong Hwangto" Balhyo Cha • 부춘다원 "우농 황토" 발효차

Buchun Dawon "Unong Hwangto" Balhyo Cha • 부춘다원 "우농 황토" 발효차
Buchun Tea Garden "Right-Agricultre Yellow-Ocher" Fermented Tea

Hwang cha, yellow tea (황차/黄茶), is a relatively new tea on the Korean tea market. Kkik Da Geo started marketing it heavily about six years ago, even featuring their own brand. When Prof Ahn first introduced it to me, I wasn't very impressed, though. I didn't let on but, actually, I didn't care for it at all. I was still enthralled with the floral, peachy sweetness of Li Shan oolong and the more savoury, piquant intricacy of hwang cha was lost on me.

It slowly grew on me, as they often served it in the shop, spreading the word, but it wasn't until a few years later, when I'd moved to the countryside and hadn't been back to Seoul for a few months, that I suddenly found my body craving it. Around that time, I happened upon a small tea shop that I've once lived and worked just a few blocks from when I first came to Korea, but had never seen before. Inside, I greeted the owner and she offered me a cup of hwang cha she'd just been brewing and I loved it. It was different than the one I'd had in Kkik Da Geo, a much deeper and richer taste and mouth feel, more calming and less heady. It could come down to it simply being from a different garden, but I also wondered if it had been aged longer than the ones I'd tried in Seoul.

Buchun Dawon (부춘다원), is the garden that this tea came from and Unong Hwangto (우농 황토) is the name of the tea, "Right-Agricultre Yellow-Ocher". "Balhyo Cha" (발효차) is literally "fermented tea" and is interchangeable with "hwang cha" in Korea. The garden is located in Hadong valley, in Jiri Mountain, the heart of Korean tea country. The leaves aren't named like Korean green tea is, but I'm quite sure jung-jak, third flush, leaves are used.

The leaves are long, twisted, and wiry, springing back when I try nudging the longer ones into the pot. They are a very dark, dusty charcoal with hints of brown. A strong, slightly spicy scent of the fermented leaves wafts from the package. After sitting a few moments in the heated pot, the smell intensifies and sweetens. It fills your throat with a sticky, spicy sensation. My mind wanders to childhood memories of my father's garden in late fall, long after harvest, when the leaves and vines of the garden began returning to earth.

Like previous observations, the colour of the brew is also much deeper with this tea; orange, not the bright yellow this type tea is named for. The taste is not easily describable, it's not quite like any other tea. Comparable to Chinese red tea, but bolder. The sweet and bitter of this tea are both present but neither exceeds the other. They balance each other in a savoury blend that reminds me of roast squash. The overall rustic character of this tea is fitting of traditional Korean aesthetic. The last, extended steep does have a predominant sweetness, with a pleasant, flavourful undertone.

The steeped leaves reveal to a muddy-green colour with bright rusty edges and stems. A pleasant warmth has consumed my body, a welcome sensation on a soggy winter morning.

Handmade Lotus Leaf Tea • 수제 연잎 차

Lotus leaf tea (연잎차, yeon ip cha) has been popular tradition in Korea for a long time. There are several different mixtures of the different parts of the lotus plant. The most common is just lotus leaf, then there's a slightly more expensive lotus leaf and flower mixture, a very expensive lotus flower tea (연꽃차, yeon kkoht cha), a newer lotus root tea (연근차, yeon geun cha) and and a lotus tea combining all three. All of these teas are usually very expensive, even as much per gram as the best Korean green teas.

During our year and a half of living in the Korean countryside, there was a lotus pond near our house, and I cut a couple of lotus leaves at the end of the summer. They made for perfect umbrellas when walking home a sudden but quick summer downpour passed over. In the house, I hung them from the ceiling for three days until they were completely dried. Commercial lotus leaf tea appears to be machine shredded but I cut them with kitchen shears into small strips, then bit by bit into smaller fragments.

I was excited to brew my first pot and see how it turned out. The smell was much greener than other lotus teas I've had, as was the bright colour of the infusion. It had the expected grassy but very sweat taste balanced by a deep, murky undertone. Lotuses are famous for emerging unsullied from the mud, but their humble, muddy origin is betrayed in the finishing taste. The more leaves used, the stronger the murkiness but but a good scoopful made a deliciously fresh brew.

Lotus tea is cleansing, and is known in Korea for its ability to flush alcohol and nicotine from your blood, which certainly explains its popularity! Aside from being a tonic, it has also gained much popularity as a slimming tea for its alleged fat burning ability. In other circles, it's also appreciated for its ability to calm mind and body, making it a great meditation tea.


























(I know it looks bad, but I was pushing the stroller! (◕‿-) Just ran ahead a bit to take this shot!)

Professor Ahn's Scholar Tree Tea • 회화나무차

Not long ago, I dug out a small package of tea that Mrs Kim (Mr Ahn's wife) had given me a few years ago. It was a special tisane, handmade with leaves Mr Ahn had harvested and roasted from his Scholar Tree (회화나무, Hwei-hwa namu).

In days of old, Scholar Trees were reserved for the royal courtyards and it was forbidden for common folk to own one. It was believed that Scholar Trees were a source of power and the king did not want to share. It was, however, permitted for temples to keep them and just up the block from Kkik Da Geo, at Jogyesa, the head temple of Korea's largest order, there is a massive Scholar Tree in the courtyard that blossoms in August, filling the entire ground with little light-yellow petals.

Emblematic of Mr Ahn's scholarly character (professor of calligraphy, tea master, traveler, patron of art), he keeps some Scholar Trees in his home, as well as outside the teashop, and in spring, when the leaves begin to bud, he crafts his own tea from it.

The leaves had reddened noticeably since she gave them to me six years ago, and I was concerned that maybe time had wasted them. Something I've learned is that some of the best teas are best enjoyed quickly even though there's an urge to treasure them slowly.

The tiny, curled, dusty leaves reminded me of a high-quality green tea. I gave them a quick rinse then steeped them for about 90 seconds, which was much too long. The colour was more ochre than I remembered, consistent with the change of the leaves, but it may have been a result of over steeping. The scent and flavour were as they were when fresh, though; reminiscent of autumn leaves, deep grassiness, slightly sour, with a strong herbal sweetness that emerges late.

The leaves yielded three full-tasting infusions, fading to a gentle, grassy sweetness at the end. I tried the tea a second time using fewer leaves, and the sourness did not appear. The brew was also much greener than the first tasting.

In traditional medicine, Scholar Tree leaves are one of the fifty fundamental herbs. It's notable medicinal properties include antibacterial, anti-cholesterolemic, anti-inflammatory, and antispasmodic.