Page 14 - Seniorstoday December 2022 Issue

the prime ones are extracted at each of the
is more interesting stuff to follow. There
is orthodox tea and there is CTC tea.
There is fanning tea and there is tea dust.
Orthodox tea means the conventional way
of producing tea using age old method of
plucking, withering, rolling, oxidisation/
fermentation and drying of tea leaves. CTC
is an acronym for Crush or Cut, Tear and
Curl. In the CTC method, the tea leaves are
passed through cylindrical rollers with
serrated blades that crush/cut, tear and
curl the tea into small pellets that we see
in the packets of tea that we get home. It is
fairly obvious that the orthodox method
requires human intervention and the focus
is on preserving the characteristics of tea
through fermentation. CTC, on the other
hand, is a mechanised process for faster
and increased production. Fanning tea and
dust tea are the lowest grades of teas after
14
earlier stages of production.
Black tea, white tea, green tea, oolong
tea and several other varieties are all
extracted out of the same tea plants
with various levels of fermentation and
drying and from different parts of the
tea plant. So are Jasmine tea, Rose tea,
Mint tea etc., variants which are blended
with oils of these flowers to romanticise
tea consumption. White tea is the most
expensive since it contains essentially
the bud surrounded by two hairy leaves
right at the top of the plant. White tea
is generally produced by the orthodox
method given the need to pluck the bud.
While China, India, Kenya, Sri Lanka,
Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam and Japan are
top producers of tea, the top 5 countries
with the highest per capita consumption
are Turkey, Ireland, UK, Iran and Russia.
Surprisingly, at last count, China figured
at 20 and India at 28; of course, it’s because