What's all the fuss about people and hard work anyway? Is it necessary to appreciate man labour and diligence in the world where machines are talking over our lives? We want some product only until we receive it, after, it usually looses the value completely. If we let machines do all the work for us now, will they be drinking tea instead of us soon as well? Think about it for a second.
If you never tasted organic Assam handmade tea before, it's time you do so. Let's admit it, machines will never be able to fully replace people. Unless we really let them. Passion, attention to details, effort and love are not something you can just plug into electricity or fuel with gasoline. You need to have a heart. This is exactly why handmade teas are more valuable from machine harvested and processed. Are we letting world to lose its heart? So, what is the difference? Why should we care?
Handcrafting Organic Tea @Kanoka
Mass market teas and artisan Assam teas
There is a big difference between mass market and artisan teas. Of course, both have their purpose, and not every leaf is suitable to be made into an artisan tea. However, all teas are suitable to become machine made, especially if we stop paying attention to quality, lose our passion and respect for human labour. If it takes 10000 to 25000 freshly picked tea shoots to make one kilogram of tea, can you imagine how much work and attention a person needs to give into carefully choosing the best leaves? Next, there is handcrafting. Handcrafting means creating a piece of art using your hands. Handcrafted tea requires using hands for processing leaves, sorting, withering, rolling, and all other steps that will lead to a perfect cup. Can tea leaves be considered a piece of art? They surely can, especially if you look at the photo of Queen of Assam.
Whole Leaf Organic Tea @Queen of Assam
Details always count
And, there is a plucking standards that need to be followed. Assam tea is following one-bud-two-leaf standard. This is called fine plucking and it cannot be obtained by a machine. What machine does is coarse plucking, without any selection of good vs. bad leaves and tearing them up. The most important flushes in Assam are first and second, harvested in March and July. As it takes a very short time when a bud opens and leaves develop into a desirable size, fine plucking can only be carried out by human hand.
Quality vs. Quantity
The best teas available are always those that are handpicked. You might already know this. So why are there so many machine harvested and processed teas available? Because it is much cheaper to make them and they always come in large batches. Artisan teas could be considered rare, as they always come in small batches, need a lot of time and effort to be created, and come from carefully selected locations and farms. There is a lot of effort to be put into producing organic Assam tea, and making it also an artisan tea, is what makes it unique, exceptional and with a soul.