実はオーストラリアでも日本茶を作っている農家さんもいるんですよ！一昨日シドニーから車て約一時間半くらいのセントラルコーストの地域にあるお茶農家さんにお邪魔してきました！
もちろん、日本との土も水も環境も違いますが、静岡のお茶畑みたいに綺麗なダンが並んでいました！オーストラリアは世界と逆で今は春です。なので、ちょうと一番茶が出来上がってたとこでした！
お茶葉を積んで、スチームとドライした段階のことを荒茶といいます。
荒茶ができたら、そこからテースティングしたりして、焙煎にかけたり、お茶葉を揉んだりして、商品のお茶ができるんですよ！
今回は荒茶の段階の葉をみせていただきました。そこで、荒茶のテースティングもさせていただき、勉強にもなりました。
Had the opportunity this week to visit a Japanese green tea farm up the central coast in NSW Sydney. It’s roughly about a hour and a half drive up north from Sydney.
Very like he scenery in our Shizuoka tea plantations where the tea trees lined in perfect cylindrical lines across the land.
As Australia has opposite seasons to the rest of the world, it’s now spring, which means the farmers had just picked the first harvest of the season!
Once green tea is harvested, it is first cleaned, steamed to sterilise, then dried. At this point it forms the raw dry material which we call “Aracha”. Once the tastings at tea auctions finish, we then further process the raw aracha tea by further steaming, rolling and roasting to produce the tea we can sell at retail and wholesale level.
It’s very rare we can do a proper aracha tasting and managed to do it with the farmers this time round which was very interesting.
It’s great to talk to the tea farmers and learn about their methods of farming and hearing stories of their passionate work to produce the best teas.
An amazing visit and we will hopefully be working with them in the near future for Australian grown Japanese green tea.