Tea auction

This morning we went to observe a tea auction and meet a tea distributor. He's married to one of the founding members of AUW and he's quite the character (he said out loud to all of us that all the government officials in Bangladesh should be killed b/c of corruption). Here's a photo of him giving us some background on tea growing and the process of selling it;

Tea flavor (all of this is black tea) depends on the soil, the weather and the elevation. It was this guy's opinion that Kenya grows the best teas because they have very consistent weather and the perfect elevation. The big tea-growing regions of Bengal are Ceylon and Assam, which are both actually in India, but border Bangladesh. Bangladesh is very low elevation and therefore has very little 'flavor' which, we were told is why they drink it with lots of sugar and milk.
We got to sit in the back of the room when they were actually auctioning. It was just a room full of men bidding on lot numbers and batches--not very exciting, but nice to see how it really goes down.

Then we got to go into the room where the buyers can inspect the various batches. There were literally HUNDREDS of cans containing samples from each batch:
Here's a closeup of some of the cans--this was the 'leaf' grade, even though it's actually ground up. The "dust" grade is actually worth more because it makes more tea per kilo. The process of making black tea includes picking the very terminal 2-4 leaves on the budding branch and then withering them in a machine with a big fan to remove 60-70% of the moisture. The tea is then oxidized for a couple hours and then it goes into a CTC machine (Cut, Tear and Curl). There's another machine called a Googy that rolls it into tiny balls. I didn't catch all the details, but I guess the 'dust' grade is whats left over after the cutting, tearing and curling.


The process of bringing tea to market was explained as the "most transparent process in Bangladesh" because the growers bring their batches to the middleman warehouse for selling and the price is said out loud and that is what's paid. Apparently no one ever argues over the spoken price. The middleman then sends out samples to large buyers, and prepares the canned samples for smaller buyers to come and inspect. The middleman then auctions off the various batches. A batch consists of 5-10 bags, each weighing 5 kilos.
We then got to taste some tea - it was very good. I kind of wish we were able to compare different grades/varieties to learn a little more about the nuances of flavor and 'liquor'.

Apparently, 3 minutes is the best steeping time--in case you were wondering.
As a side note, I have successfully and quite easily given up coffee since I left California! There's lots of tea everywhere here and I've found the transition quite easy.
The history of tea in this region comes (unsurprisingly) from the British. They used to pay locals to drink tea in order to get them addicted and create a larger market, as all the early plantations were owned by the British. It's also fairly common knowledge that all the tea-pickers are the poorest, darkest people and a lot of them live in almost-slavery. Sorry for the downer at the end--it was a great informative little tour and I have a whole new appreciation for black tea!