Guide to the Spring Harvest: of Buds and Leaves
Written by Winnie Yu
The most anticipated time of year for tea enthusiasts, many of us wait for the opportunity to taste teas, particularly the green teas, at their freshest. But with so many variations in shapes and styles, many of us cannot distinguish one green or white or oolong tea from another. It’s important to first understand the way many teas are defined- by the shapes they are harvested, or created.
When the tea bushes sprout in the spring, the first leaves to shoot out are merely leaf buds, folded and with a layer of fuzz on the outside. The size of these leaf buds can be as small as a sliver of overgrown fingernail. Depending on the varietal grown at each region, the buds can also be large, like the Silver Needle White tips, furry and much larger than its namesake needle. The bud of the Taiwan Beauty Oolong ? The highest grades are almost microscopic and impossible to harvest, even by hand. In the case of Bamboo Green, each bud must resemble a bamboo leaf, oblong and slender and tapered to a point. A very fast harvester can only pick about ½ lb. of leaf buds an entire day! The buds are then sorted through a mesh to determine just how fine the grade was.
Those tea shapes which are not bud only, are further described by the leaves attached to the buds. For example, the sparrow’s tongue shape is two very tender, immature leafs forked like a bird’s tongue, and equally as small. A bud attached to a small leaf is called the spear shape, and the most famous example is Long Jing (Dragonwell) When Dragonwell leaves fall to the bottom of one’s cup, they drop vertically, building a forest full of yellowish green spears.
Though many teas are defined by the shapes of leaf or bud harvested, most are defined by the shapes they are made into. When the buds are ultra small and fine, they are rolled into snail shapes such as the Bi Luo chun or the Lu Shan Clouds and Mist. Very narrow, small but longer shaped tender leaves are usually rolled vertically into shapes called Hairtip (Mao Jian), or Hair Peak (Mao Feng).The requirement is that they taper to a point at the end, and are generally long and thin, exactly like a hair! The highest level attained in this type of green tea shape is called Pine Needle Shape (Song Zhen), and the most prestigious version of this type is the Nanjing Rain Flower (Yu Hua) green tea. Purportedly, only 10 or so artisans remain in China who can roll leaves into this shape, because not only must the leaf taper to a point, it must also start out round at one end, with a knife edge, and completely straight without breakage. This incredible shape is both brittle yet strong.
Larger green leaves, such as the Liu An Melon Pieces (Gua Pian) was so named because all of the stems were removed, leaving only a melon seed shaped leaf. The Liu An and the Tai Ping Hou Kui are both flat pressed, larger size, more full bodied green teas.
But Oolong teas require even larger, more mature leaves. Usually, the buds are flanked by two opposing mature leaves to form a W shape. The harvesters must scan fields of millions of sprouts to pick just the right ones; leaves have to large enough to oxidize for oolong, but not too much stem must be attached between the bud and the leaf or the brewed tea will taste diluted. Harvesters are expert and skillful and must have great abilities to scan rapidly. We will talk more about Oolong tea shapes next time.
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