The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [44]
Uva Highlands Pekoe comes from the mountain peaks of the Uva district, about 3,600 feet above sea level. Set on the western side of Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands, Uva Highlands estate makes its teas during the dry season in August and September, when the mountains block the monsoon rains buffeting the eastern side of the island. Because of both the varietal and the way it is processed, during the tea making the leaves produce an “ester,” or aromatic compound, called “methyl salicylate” that offers a minty fresh taste.
To concentrate the tea’s flavors, Uva Highlands takes advantage of the cold mountain air and processes its teas in the middle of the night, starting at about one in the morning. The estate does a hard wither for about eighteen hours, making the leaves crackly dry. Then it rolls the leaves in an Orthodox rolling machine, macerating them thoroughly. Finally, it decimates the leaves in a rotovane, a machine resembling an airplane propeller, which shreds the leaves not once but twice, reducing them to a doughy green pulp. The decimation makes the tea heartily brisk, or “gutty,” as it’s called in the tea world.
The mass of pulverized leaves is spread out on raised tiles, where it oxidizes for about an hour and a half. The relatively brief oxidation gives the leaves a charmingly lighter hue. It also draws out the lovely wintergreen flavor and aroma. To preserve these scents and tastes, the company fires the leaves in the oven at a lower temperature than that of other regions. The light firing protects the volatile compounds, rather than masking them with additional heat flavors.
KENYAN BLACK TEAS
1. Milima GFBOP1
Twish I could offer more Kenyan black teas, but only a tiny fraction of the country’s pure, Orthodox teas are good enough to drink on their own. As opposed to the centralized tea estates of India and Sri Lanka, and the small gardens of China and Japan, in Kenya tea production is scattered among nearly half a million small farmers, all operating independently. This huge number makes quality control an almost insurmountable challenge. The lion’s share of the tea is turned into CTC pellets, added to blends, and packaged in teabags. Hardly any of these blends are even marketed as Kenyan tea.
Kenyans have cultivated tea since the early 1900s, when the British established the first tea plantations in what was then their colony. By the 1920s, the British were manufacturing African tea commercially, and by the 1950s, after South Asia had won its independence from Great Britain, Kenya supplied the British with the bulk of their tea. Today, the equatorial African country still provides Great Britain with over 40 percent of its black teas and is the fourth largest producer of tea after China, Sri Lanka, and India. The largest tea-growing areas lie in the southwestern part of the country, west of the Rift Valley in the Kenyan Highlands. There, tea thrives in the cool air at elevations more than six thousand feet above sea level, peaking during the February dry season.
To command higher prices, a small cohort of Kenyan tea makers has begun experimenting with Orthodox pure teas, both white and black. I look forward to enjoying the results. Though quality is on the rise, the finest pure teas from Kenya are not yet on a par with the best from South Asia. The best I’ve found so far is the following Milima Broken Orange Pekoe from the Kenyan Highlands, with charming orange and spice notes to make it a tea to watch.
MILIMA GFBOP1 Milima Golden Flowery Broken Orange Pekoe No. 1
Milima is Swahili for “In a High Place.” The tea plants that produce this tea grow more than six thousand feet above sea level in the Kenyan Highlands. The leaves take on lovely flavors in the cool air and rocky soil. Milima is a pure black tea made from a blend of leaves from three gardens belonging to the British James Finlay Tea Company. The leaves are brought to the Marinyn estate, where the teas