Stalk picking (jian ti)

The categories this step defines

In tea, processing is not a modifier applied to a category — it is what creates the category. These are the types that exist because this step exists.

• Oolong — Deliberate bruising to initiate edge oxidation, halted partway, frequently followed by roasting.

What it is

A strip oolong comes off the first drying with stalk still attached, because the plucking standard for oolong deliberately takes an open shoot with stem. The stalk has to go, and the reason it is picked by hand rather than screened out is that it lies parallel to the leaf and has almost the same dimensions, so a sieve cannot see it. In Wuyi and Anxi practice the picking is scheduled between the initial drying and the main roast, which is a real ordering decision with two consequences: the roast then acts only on leaf, so the wood-and-stem note that a roasted stalk contributes never enters the tea, and the picked lot loses ten to twenty per cent of its weight before the most expensive operation is applied to it rather than after. Where a producer picks after roasting instead, the tea carries that note and the difference is tastable. It is slow, entirely manual, usually done by women working from trays, and it is one of the largest labour costs in a finished yancha.

Also transliterated as: jian ti, jianti, jian cha.

What it does to the leaf

Removes stalk, yellowed leaf and broken fragments by hand from part-finished leaf, so that subsequent roasting acts on leaf material alone.

What it does to the cup

Picking before the roast keeps out the woody, hollow note that roasted stalk contributes; picking after it, or not at all, leaves that note in the cup and dulls the top of the aroma.

Variants that matter

Ways this step is carried out that produce genuinely different results, rather than regional names for the same thing.

Picking between roasts

The standard for Wuyi rock oolong: dry, pick, roast, rest, roast again. The picking sits at the point where the leaf is dry enough to handle and not yet committed to a roast level.

Machine pre-separation

Colour sorters and winnowers take out the obvious stalk first, leaving hand pickers a smaller and more skilled job. Now common, and not sufficient on its own.

Unpicked grades

Volume oolong is sold with the stalk in. Honest at its price, and the single easiest thing to see when comparing a cheap yancha with an expensive one.

Other steps at the Rolling and shaping stage

• Blending to a standard — Combining lots so that a named tea tastes the same in March and in October, which is a manufacturing step performed on finished tea and not a compromise applied to it afterwards.
• Cloth-ball rolling — Wrapping leaf tightly in cloth and repeatedly kneading and unwrapping it until it forms tight spheres.
• CTC (crush, tear, curl) — Leaf passed through counter-rotating toothed rollers that cut it into small uniform granules.
• Curling and down-raising (cuo tuan xian hao) — Rubbing warm leaf between the palms into loose balls and breaking them apart repeatedly, which curls the leaf into spirals and lifts its down to the surface.
• De-stemming and de-veining — Separating stem and leaf vein from the leaf blade after drying, usually by air separation.
• Flat shaping — Pressing leaf flat against the side of a heated wok by hand during pan-firing.
• Needle shaping (li tiao) — Shaking fixed leaf along heated parallel grooves until each piece straightens into a needle, rather than twisting it into a curl.
• Orthodox processing — The older manufacturing route, in which leaf is twisted and rolled rather than cut, so it survives largely intact.
• Pearl forming (chao gan cheng yuan) — Working rolled leaf against the wall of a heated pan through successive pans until each piece closes into a hard sphere, drying and shaping in the same operation.
• Refining (shiage) — The second factory. Japanese green tea leaves the producer as aracha, an unfinished trade good, and is cut, sorted and separated elsewhere into the several named teas one intake contains.
• Repeat rolling and roll-breaking (fu rou) — Rolling is done in two or three passes with the compacted lumps broken up and sifted between them, because one long pass tightens the outside of a ball of leaf and never reaches the middle.
• Rolling and shaping — Working the leaf to rupture its cells and give it a form that governs how it later brews.
• Rotorvane maceration — A screw press with internal vanes that macerates withered leaf continuously, sitting between orthodox rolling and CTC rather than belonging to either.
• Sorting and grading — Separating dried tea by particle size, density and colour into the grades it is sold as — a sorting operation, not a quality judgement.
• Stone milling — Grinding de-stemmed tencha into powder between slow-turning granite wheels.
• Strip rolling — Rolling leaf into long twisted strips rather than compressing it into balls.

Guides covering this step

• Reading a processing description on a packet — Most of what a packet says about processing is either a translation artefact, a marketing term, or a genuine and checkable fact. Telling the three apart is a learnable skill and it is worth more than any tasting note.