Bingcha (Round Tea Cake) Factory

This Bing Cha factory video is from one of our sourcing trips in the early, start-up years as a tea company when we were auditing new suppliers. It is a visual landscape from a tea factory near Menghai in Southern Yunnan specializing in making round tea cakes (Bingcha). The visuals include the sun drying of the cakes and also on indoor wooden racks. In shaping the cakes, the leaves are first steamed and then put into cloth sacks and finally molded with stone weights.

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Nilgiri Tea Estate

View a tea garden in the Nilgiris, South India. Nilgiris are also called the ‘Blue Mountains’ of India and famous for the lush, green tea gardens. The video is made by a friend of ours Indi Khanna who is resident in the small town of Coonoor in the Nilgiris. Indi has spent the last 25 years in the tea industry in various roles. We enjoy working with him in different tea related projects.

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Japanese Tea Harvester

Traditionally, most teas in Japan used to be plucked by hand. These days, Japanese tea is mostly harvested with the use of a mechanical harvesting machine. Only high grades of green teas in Japan such as hand-picked Gyokuro, Sencha, or Matcha are hand plucked and therefore more expensive. There is also a difference in flavor of the tea between hand plucked or machine plucked. Hand plucked tea is smoother, mellower with more fragrance.

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