Premium versus lower quality tea?

Premium quality teas are distinguished via the care taken in cultivating and harvesting, the skill of the producer processing the tea and storage after production.

1. Plants and Harvesting

• Plant quality, the right plant growing in the conditions best suited for that plant is a factor. That is one of the reasons why different areas specialise in certain tea varieties.  These areas have the correct combination of sun shine, rain fall, altitude of the plantation and soil condition for a tea variety.
• Correct harvesting is another important factor.  Leaves need to be  picked at the optimal time of the each year, harvested during the day and processed at night. This crucial element of timing of the harvest and processing can be  a matter of hours. Working during the harvest seasons is often 24hrs around the clock.

2. Skill and experience of the producer:

• It has taken thousands of years of experiences and skills to fine tune the art of tea making - “Manual production reflecting tradition and outstanding craftsmanship (China)”.
• The art of processes tea is complicated and involves many steps.  The delicacy of the process is such that the person in charge could make the difference between the finest tea and the tea of low quality on any particular day.
• Compromises in any step will affect the quality of the final product.

3. Fresh tea and its packaging

Tea is a very sensitive product. Even the top quality teas deteriorate rapidly when exposed to:

• light
• high temperature
• moisture
• foreign odour

At Valley Green Tea, we use the latest packaging technique to avoid above tea damaging factors: high quality foil vacuum bags to package tea in small quantity of 10-25gms; refrigeration when necessary.