There were no tea pluckers to be seen in the extended velvety carpets of tea plants spread over the hills, which according to the information provided was due to a local holiday (which we would later find out was not the exact reason).
We were shown into the tea manufacturing premises on a visit that would take us through the long processing of the tea leaves, which turned out to be very interesting.
According to what we were told the tea plant is cultivated at three levels of altitude - from sea level up to 600 metres (low grown), from 600 to 1200 metres (mid grown) and higher than 1200 (high grown) with its harvesting starting from the third year of the plant's life. Traditionally it is the women who harvest the tea, picking together two leaves and a bud (known as a pekoe).
The harvested leaves are taken to the factory immediately after and spread out for 18 hours on nylon nets which are assailed from below with a flow of warm air (the drying phase), they are then broken up by a special metal roller (the rolling phase), followed by being place in a cold, ventilated room in which by means of a enzyme action the tea is made to ferment by oxydyzing the tannin of the leaves in a two hour process (the fermentation process), at which point the tea assumes its characteristics. The following phase halts the fermentation process and lowers the humidity of the leaves from 65% to 2% (baking phase), after which the leaves are separated according to the different characteristics (sellection phase).
Soon after the visit we were given some time to buy some tea at the factory store and although many of us had already bought tea we couldn't resist getting some of the best quality one.
Before driving back to Kandy, we stopped at a former English village bearing the same name as the hills.
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