Sri Lankan Gold “Taylay” – Tamil for Tea

As always, I am struck by the limbs, and in this case, the feet of the tea harvester. Splayed, covered in mud, and entirely competent, the feet that are before me are moving restlessly over the damp earth. The woman whose feet I stare at is a non-stop blur of movement, like an exotic turbine along the row of tea bushes. With hands breaking off soaking tea leaves in a constant motion, tea’s beauty and labor intensive requirements are laid bare in a moment. Mists conspire, winds rip and a ferocious drizzle provide the backdrop to this environment at 1,800 meters. Her wild chirps at a fellow picker are the only sounds above the wind, the patter of drops from the sky and the “snaps” as she snips the stem.

Kilometers outside the town of Nuwara Eliya, deep into the sumptuous green belly of Sri Lanka’s ‘Tea Country” I have come to the land of the prized Ceylon Orange Pekoes, but once again I become distracted by those who harvest, clip and work the fields. This year the ‘dry season’ has been replaced by the ‘torrential season’ with villages in the area sliding down mountains and roads simply disappearing. None of this though disturbs the Tamil women who make up the harvest teams.

Chewing the beetle nut, unleashing torrents of red saliva in loud expectorations, the woman before me clamors along the row of tea bushes with the supreme abilities of someone who knows intimately their environment. Tamils, who refer to tea as ‘taylay’, were forcibly moved here to harvest, and harvest they have for years, with an intensity and earnestness that is palatable the moment the eyes fall upon them.

The woman before me, Naella, is in her late 20’s and has for all her life plucked ‘the green’. Her hands, like her feet, are moving rapid-fire and clip the stems just below the ‘bud and two flags’. Her fingernails are tea stained. Layers of waterproof plastic cover her sari. Naella in the mist fed air appears huge and potent with a massive sack tied around her head as the hands shovel tea leaves up and over into the bag. At the end of the day, given fortune and no landslides, she will have collected 14 incredible kilograms of tea leaves. Within 24 hours of picking, her harvest will have been whittled down to maybe 1.5 kg’s and will be ready for consumption….in a cup.

Orange Pekoe is the tea that was designed and created for the west’s need to add milk and sugar to the leaf’s tannins and bitterness. Asking Naella how she prefers her tea, she looks at me with intense eyes and smiles a smile that temporarily erases the landscape around us. She utters “with sugar” before continuing on and breaking out in laughter.

Amounts in this region count, for weighing stations measure the weight of collected tea leaves twice a day, and at the end of the day, if more than the daily quota is collected – anywhere from 10-15 kg’s – bonuses are collected.

If one, however, is to stray out of the huge plantations and into regions where the tea’s qualities as opposed to quantities are paramount, one will find some gems. Within the vaunted jungles of the eastern central region (where I am headed next) are small yield manicured tea gardens producing special teas that set the tongue alight.

Silver Golden tips are premium end buds and do not go through turbo-charged withering, rolling, fermenting and drying stages. They are picked sun/shade dried and are ready in leaf form for consumption with none of the rush…the advantage to the loose leaf varieties is that at least at the end of the production there is a leaf to verify that in fact this once was tea.

The lands of central Sri Lanka in early February’s supposed dry season this year are in total flux as the entire island is under siege by water from above. Water falls and streams plunge gushing sheets of white amidst the green waves of tea.

Steam engines still make the journey up these mountains much as they did a century ago, heaving and sighing as they chugg along. Roads in the regions are in the words of one driver “a shambles”. Mists vaporize entire landscapes in ten minutes and then re-introduce them once again. Drizzle comes in swirling sheets and for all of the ‘inclemency’ this is truly ‘tea weather’ as the tea craves only indirect precipitation and sunlight.

Rolling tea hills – entire landscapes broken only by villages and the odd forest – seem to be cut into honeycomb segments. They do not shimmy in the winds nor do they bend in the rain, but rather, in their stout and toughened shapes, they ride out the weather like the stoics that they are. Tea paths carve diagonal lines, with bodies barely visible in the moody fogs, using long bamboo rods to place atop the bushes. These rods act as markers, which delineate how far on any one row one has picked. Every three to five years the tea bushes will be completely pruned and in these regions (unlike the ancient tea trees and bushes of southern Yunnan) every 15 years the tea bushes will be uprooted and have new tea bushes planted in their place.

In a tea tasting with bones and fabric sodden with the rain I sat before three cups of tea, all with the slightly baffling array of letter denominations. From left to right an ‘OP’ (Orange Pekoe), a ‘BOP’ (Broken Orange Pekoe) and finally a ‘BOPF’ (Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings) the last being the most potent and the one that most directly and successfully hit my palate. While sipping away, my mind kept straying back to those bare feet I’d seen earlier in the day working their way along the rows and the woman who owned them – so it was with tea’s journey.