|
TEA IS PICKED IN THE SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH Moons. Young
and tender shoots, growing on rich, fertile soil, should not be pulled
until they look like fern or bracken and are four to five inches long.
In any case, the shoots should be picked only while the dew is still
cool.
When the tea shoots have flushed out into thick
undergrowth, select the fullest among the shoots of three, four or five
branches, pull them off and pluck them.
Do not pick on the day that has seen rain nor when clouds spoil the sky. Pick tea only on a clear day.
All there is to making tea is to pick it, steam it, pound it, shape it, dry it, tie it and seal it.
Tea
has a myriad of shapes. If I may speak vulgarly and rashly, tea may
shrink and crinkle like a Mongol's boots. Or it may look like the
dewlap of a wild ox, some sharp, some curling as the eaves of a house.
It can look like a mushroom in whirling flight just as clouds do when
they float out from behind a mountain peak. Its leaves can swell and
leap as if they were being lightly tossed on wind-disturbed water.
Others will look like clay, soft and malleable, prepared for the hand
of the potter and will be as clear and pure as if filtered through
wood. Still others will twist and turn like the rivulets carved out by
a violent rain in newly tilled fields.
Those are the very finest of teas.
But
there are also teas like the husk of bamboo, hard of stem and too firm
to steam or beat. They assume the shape of a sieve. Then there are
those that are like the lotus after frost. Their stem and leaves become
sere and limp, their appearance so altered that they look like piled-up
rubble. Such teas are old and barren of worth.
From picking to
sealing there are seven steps, and there are eight categories of
shapes, from the leaves that look like a Mongol's boots to those that
are like a lotus flower killed by frost.
Among would-be connoisseurs
there are those who praise the excellence of a tea by noting its
smoothness and commenting upon the glossy jet shades of the liquor.
They are the least capable of judges. Others will tell you it is good
because it is yellow, wrinkled and has depressions and mounds. They are
better judges. But the really superior taster will judge tea in all its
characteristics and comment upon both the good and the bad.
For
every individual criticism there is a reason. If the tea leaf exudes
its natural juices, it will be glossy and black. If the oils are
contained, then it will appear wrinkled. If it has been manufactured
for a long time, it will be black. Tea over which the sun has scarcely
set will be yellow. Steamed and tamped, it will be smooth. Allowed to
remain loose, it will have hollows and hills. There is nothing
unnatural in that, for tea is like other herbs and leaves in that
regard.
Its goodness is a decision for the mouth to make.
|
