Archive for year: 2015

Harvest is the busiest time of year for any tea plantation and it’s no different for Two Rivers Green Tea. Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on before the tea hits your cup.

Two Rivers produces Japanese style green tea from our plantation in the Acheron Valley, a couple of hours’ drive northeast of Melbourne.

The Australian picking season is, of course, on an opposite schedule to the tea-growing regions in the northern hemisphere and weather such as frost, rain and the amount of sun we’ve had will determine exactly when we pick. We harvest three times a year, usually November, January and March.

Here’s what the plantation at Two Rivers looks like when the tea is just about ready for harvest.

The tea bushes are planted about 30cm apart to allow the harvester to run its treads either side of the bushes.

The body of the harvester is set at about the height where the tealeaves grow up from their stems. There’s a blade that trims at this level, cutting the leaves from the bushes. At the same time, a fan transports the loose leaves into a container at the back of the harvester.

When the container is full, the harvester empties the tealeaves into a larger receptacle, which is loaded onto a truck.

The harvesting equipment is the result of Japanese ingenuity and makes tea picking more efficient so we can get the newly picked leaves to the next stage quicker, resulting in fresher tea.

Each receptacle on the truck has a fan in it, blowing onto the leaves to keep them from stewing. When the truck is fully loaded, it heads straight to the processing plant where the leaves undergo the steaming, drying and rolling that gives Australian-grown tealeaves that clean Japanese taste.

And here’s what the tea bushes look like after trimming—ready to grow again for the next harvest in a few weeks’ time.

It takes about a day to harvest about two hectares of tea bushes, so that’s six days to harvest at Two Rivers, which is 12 hectares.

Shincha is new tea

The first harvest, which is what makes our shincha, occurs in late October to early November. The exact date depends on the weather and the readiness of the tea, as different cultivars grow at different rates.

Then, 50 days after the first harvest comes the second harvest, giving enough time for the tea bushes to send out new shoots and regrow its leaves in the warmer weather. The third and final harvest occurs 50 days after the second harvest, in the middle of summer, producing the tea with the most robust flavour. These harvests give us our sencha tea.

Waiting a little longer will often yield more tea, but harvesting more tea isn’t always the best course of action. Firstly, it takes longer to harvest tea that’s a little older because the leaves are bigger and the stems are thicker. Secondly, the smaller the leaves, the finer the taste tends to be, so every harvest is always a decision between producing enough tea with the right taste. If you’ve been drinking our tea, you’ll know it’s of a consistent quality, thanks to the tea masters who make these crucial decisions.

Green tea tastes best fresh, but a lot of the products you see sitting on supermarket shelves have already taken a couple of years to get there. When you drink Two Rivers Green tea, you’re getting a clean local product that’s at its freshest. Enjoy a new season cuppa—try our shincha today.

Tea has a stimulating effect often attributed to the caffeine it contains, but there is a lot of misinformation about how much caffeine is in tea.

There’s an old legend that makes an early link between tea and wakefulness. It features a Buddhist follower who accidentally falls asleep during meditation. In order to stay awake, he cuts off his eyelids and throws them on the ground where they became tea bushes.

Waking up to a cup of green tea in the morning is not nearly as brutal, but you can expect a stimulating effect from the caffeine tea contains. However, there are a number of things to consider before you refuse that cup before bedtime.

How much caffeine is in tea?
The caffeine in tea depends a lot on growing conditions, production and steeping. Even though all tea is from the same plant, Camellia sinensis, a green tea grown in Australia like Two Rivers will have a different caffeine profile to one grown in Japan or China, simply because of the elevation, soil and climate.

Time of harvest and production methods, such as whether the tea producer steams or pan-fries the leaves, plus withering time will also have an effect. Lastly, the quality and temperature of water in which you steep your tea, and the brewing time, will also make a difference on the amount of caffeine in the tea liquor.

This mean you’ll get wildly different caffeine measurements from study to study depending on the tea the scientists use and how they brew it. According to the Australian Beverage Council [link: http://australianbeverages.org/for-consumers/caffeine-facts/], a cup (250ml) of green tea contains anywhere from 30 to 50mg of caffeine, while a latte or cappuccino has anywhere from 113-282mg for the same volume.

But just measuring the caffeine in green tea is not enough. How it is absorbed will give you an idea of how you can use it for stimulation—or relaxation.

Tea versus coffee
Milligram for milligram, the caffeine in tea is different from the caffeine in coffee. Coffee gives you a jolt. Within 20 minutes, the caffeine will begin to remove some of the ‘traffic lights’ in your system, making you more alert. The downside is that once you reach peak stimulation, it drops off pretty quickly, so you crash.

Green tea, however,

has a much gentler ascent due the antioxidants in tea, which slows the absorption of caffeine. You may not reach peak alertness as quickly as you do with coffee but tea will keep you on a plateau of stimulation for longer.

Another thing to note is the way caffeine works with L-theanine, an amino acid in tea, which reduces stress. That’s right, you get the alertness from the caffeine while remaining relaxed. This means no caffeine crash.

Green tea before bedtime
Will green tea keep you awake all night if you have a cuppa before bedtime? Everyone processes caffeine differently so if you’re sensitive to caffeine, a cup before hitting the pillow is probably not a recipe for a good night’s sleep.

But if you know where green tea takes you stimulation-wise—with the L-theanine strong enough to help you de-stress but the caffeine mild enough to allow you to sleep—then a cuppa before bedtime might be a good way to relax.