Tea Museum

 In Munnar we visited the Tea Museum, which is actually a still-functioning processing plant on one of the plantations.  The tall thin trees growing on the tops of the hills are eucalyptus, which were brought in from Australia because they grow so quickly.  They're used for timber to stoke the furnaces used in the tea plant, which seemed to still be using equipment from around WW1.  Along with lots of photos of the English colonial overlords being carried around in hammock-like devices up and down the plantation slopes and elephant herds grazing amid the tea plants, we saw a working tea processing plant.  We learned that the women - it's always and only women - who pick the tea leaves pick around 35 kilograms a day, for which they are paid 160 rupees, which is just under four dollars.  Tea is actually a tree, but they cut it every few years to maintain it at a height of around three feet; if not, a tea tree can reach 40 feet or so.  A tea plant can produce viable leaves for tea for over 100 years, but only the bright green leaves can be used; once they're dark green they have no flavor and serve only for photosynthesis for the tree itself.  We are told in excruciating detail about the C-T-C process, and all the Indians (it was practically all Indian tourists except for us and one British family) nod knowingly.  I don't and ask him what the hell CTC stands for.  He looks disappointed, though not particularly surprised, at how stupid foreigners are, then says "Crush Tear Curl."  That's what the machine does to the dried tea leaves in order to reduce them to a fine dusty powder that can actually be used to make tea.  The whole plant smells wonderful; the whole air in Munnar smells like tea and fresh grass, and it was extraordinary after three months in Kabul to breathe clean air.  Anyway, 4 kilograms of tea leaves yield one kilo of dried tea which is then crushed, torn and curled.

All tea, black, green or white, comes from the same plant; it's just processed differently.  After the CTC process, black tea is oxidated for 45 minutes - which is why black tea doesn't have great anti-oxidant properties.  Also, if you think about it, it means that black tea is rusted.  Green tea is made by boiling and then drying the leaves, but not oxidating.  White tea comes from just the small flowery buds of the tea plant; the buds are curled and then dried and then are ready for tea making.  Texas tea was nowhere to be found. We get a green tea with milk from the factory, and it is the best tea I have ever tasted.