In this morning's vocational session I learned a bit about tea brokering. Tea is the 3rd largest source of revenue in Sri Lanka following remittance of wages from overseas workers and the garment industry. Tea brokers essentially represent the plantation owner and sell the product to buyers all over the world. After the tea is harvested and processed the tea broker evaluates the product by preparing a small sample of that particular crop. The broker inspects the tea leaf, the wet leaf infusion of tea leaves, and the prepared liquor for a variety of properties including process quality, color and flavor. The purpose for this is two-fold - he provides information to potential buyers that will help set the selling price and feedback to the plantation owner as to the quality of a particular crop. We witnessed a couple professional brokers taste tea and then tried our hand at it. It must be an acquired taste – no matter how different the prepared liquors looked – some were very clear and others opaque like they already had a small amount of milk added, and some were very dark and others light – they all tasted pretty much the same to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment