Tagged: orthodox tea
A Tea's Grade Is a Size Code, Not a Quality Score
A tea's grade, OP, BOP, PD, Dust, is a sorting code, not a quality score, and it is the single biggest reason two kilos of tea from the same garden sell for very different prices at auction.
The Economics of the Tea Bag: How a Packing Machine, Not the Leaf, Built the Format Most of the World Drinks
The tea bag began as a shipping accident, but what made it cheap enough to dominate the world market was a German packing machine, and what still shapes its cost today is the material of the sachet itself.
How Black Tea Is Made: CTC and Orthodox
The canonical reference on the two ways black tea is manufactured, crush-tear-curl and orthodox, and why that one factory decision has sorted the world's tea economies into different positions in the market.
India's Tea Industry
The world's second-largest tea producer is also its largest tea-drinking nation, and the two facts explain most of the rest. How a colonial plantation crop became four distinct growing regions, a smallholder majority the estates did not see coming, an auction system half its own producers now want to escape, and a trade caught between a record export year and three separate fights over access.