The area around Hwaeom-sa Temple in Gurye, on the westernmost slopes of Jirisan, is famous for the many ancient tea bushes growing there. The tea growing around Hwaeom-sa is truly wild, having spread freely across the hillsides among the bamboo groves since it was first planted there by monks returning from China well over a thousand years ago.

These descendants of the first tea seeds planted in Korea are tough; they have survived winter colds unknown in their native China, summer rains, typhoons, and centuries of neglect when nobody even remembered that their name was ‘cha,’ and their leaves were only picked by rural women to make bitter medicinal potions. The true tea bush puts down its tap root vertically, deep into the ground, and grows very slowly, always ready to sacrifice its branches to winter’s icy winds and begin to grow anew from the root.

 

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Tea field near Jirisan Mountain (photo: Yonhap News)

My favorite spot is a small, secluded tea field where wild tea bushes were transplanted one by one, many years earlier, to make the picking easier. Higher up around Hwaeom-sa, where the tea bushes grow freely, the people picking the fresh buds have to force their way between bamboos, scramble up rocky slopes, and constantly hunt for scattered bushes hidden in the undergrowth.

In an organized tea field it is much easier. But even here, the hardy local women who are experts at tea-picking still cannot expect to pick more than four or five kilograms of fresh leaves in a whole day, although the picking is relatively easy.

Inexperienced city-dwellers would need a whole day to pick just a few hundred grams. The main art is to recognize the buds which are at the right stage, with one leaf still rolled in the bud, one barely open, and one fully open. No stems, no old leaves, only fresh buds. That is where the flavor lies!

 

The tea field lies on the far side of a small stream and is best reached riding in the open back of a small truck, up a winding track where wild deer and boars are sometime seen, with the sounds of pheasants squawking and cuckoos calling.

Most city-dwellers in Korea, whether Korean or foreigners, have little or no idea of what real green tea tastes like; they know nothing but the horror of teabags. So when the tea-maker serves freshly dried green tea, jaws are heard dropping. Such intensely subtle, natural flavors have nothing in common with the burned, harsh brews people are used to drinking in coffee shops. They have never tasted anything like this before.

“Chakseol-cha” (sparrow tongues) is the traditional form of tea that Korean tea-makers have mainly been producing since the tea revival began in the 1960s; it is also known as ‘ttokeum cha’ or ‘green tea.’ Several kilograms of freshly picked leaves are tossed into a scorchingly hot cauldron and rapidly tossed so that they do not burn.

A tea master does the serious work, while others lend a thickly gloved hand to keep the batch turning. There is a faint hissing as the juices begin to emerge and evaporate. The master presses the leaves against the cauldron and soon they have formed a loose ball that starts to shrink in size. Then the leaves are removed from the heat, tossed onto a cloth-covered table, and the whole team sets about rubbing handfuls vigorously, rolling the leaves without breaking them so that the vital juices are exposed to the air. This work determines the quality of the final taste.

The rolled leaves have to be loosened up to prevent them forming clumps and knots, then they go back into the cauldron for more drying. After a second session of rubbing, the drying leaves go back and forth between the cauldron and the table, no longer to be rolled, since they would break, but to be ventilated and separated. They have grown very sticky!

After five visits to the heat, there only remains about 20 percent of the original weight. The leaves are spread thinly on mesh trays to rest and finish drying. Newcomers to tea are amazed at the wonderful fragrance that emerges as the leaves dry. It is hard work to produce tea by hand.

There still remains the last stage; some hours later the almost fully dried tea goes back into a lightly warmed cauldron, where it is kept constantly turning for an hour or two. This has to be done by a skilled master; it is the moment when the tastes of the finished tea develop fully. Too much heat might spoil the whole batch, and too little processing will produce rather insipid tea.

The tea has been through some violent stages and processes; it now needs some time to rest and recover. Like the tea-makers! It is only a few days later that the tea can be drunk or packed. Such tea is rare, and rather costly. It is important also to know how to prepare and serve it so that the full quality of taste and fragrance emerges to delight the drinkers. Tea is one of the wonders of nature, made perfect by human skills.

 

[Source: Korea.net]