Lockhart Tea Factory - The White Tea !!!

“Where there is tea, there is hope” – Arthur Wing Pinero

Who doesn’t like hot tea at any time? And when you visit the land of tea, never fail to know how this magic drink is made.

So, our holiday trip to Kerala included the visit to Lockhart tea factory at Munnar.

This is more than 100 years old and produce tea using orthodox manufacturing process and transport to various parts of the world. Factory is named by the location “Lockhart” and is owned by Harrisons Malayalam limited.

Lockhart is 13kms away from Munnar on the way to Munnar-Madurai highway. It is an ideal viewpoint of lush green valleys. And this is a great photography spot too.

And the Lockhart tea factory – It is more than 100 years old and it is famous for manufacturing orthodox tea in traditional way. This is owned by Harrisons Malayalam limited that does tea cultivation in more than 10 estates only in Kerala.

The factory allows visitors in regular working hours. Fee for visiting the tea manufacturing process is Rs. 200 and photos are strictly not allowed inside the factory.

The factory has

                Museum

                Tea sales outlet

                A small canteen.

Before our factory tour started, we spent some time in museum where olden photographs, tools, machines etc. are displayed.

Outside the museum, so many flora are planted in pots. The plants included Rudraksha, clove, peach, mullatha, allspice, lakshmitharu, cardamom, murivunaki, sandal etc.

We thought of having hot tea in the canteen before the factory tour commenced and the menu included white tea, black tea and green tea. I was not aware of this white tea and assumed it to be the normal milk tea and ordered that. Only then I got to know that white tea exists. After tasting that, I was eager to know how they manufacture white tea.

After a while, a factory person took us for tour. We were given foot gloves. She took us through all rooms in the factory explaining us the process of traditional tea making, normal tea, green tea and white tea.

So, let me explain it briefly.

There are 2 ways of producing tea – Orthodox, CTC

Orthodox - Time consuming traditional method and the blends are processed by hands. High quality leaves are used. They do have an authentic flavor and highly priced.

CTC – Crush Tear Curl method, that is, a fast mode that uses machineries to extract the tea flavor. This gives a strong color and fairly priced.

Lockhart tea factory produces tea in the orthodox method. They produce black tea, green tea and white tea. In the tea estates, leaves are handpicked for the production and they are segregated for the tea varieties.

In a tea plant, we have a bud, high quality leaves as well as low quality leaves. (Picture for reference. Taken from internet as we were not allowed to take photographs inside the factory).

Black Tea

Orthodox black tea uses all the types of leaves, but only leaves whereas CTC takes the whole plant and crushes.

The orthodox process for black tea goes as below

• Hand plucking of leaves (Three leaves and a bud)
• Leaves are segregated. Fine leaves are sent for green tea preparation and bud for white tea.
• Then the leaves are spread for the withering process to reduce the moisture. It is spread in huge containers in a big hall and left for a day to remove the moisture.
• Then the dry leaves are crushed. They are done manually using rollers. There were 5-6 rollers and the process is repeated till they get the desired texture. Orthodox tea will not look like powder but just crushed leaves. In the factory, we were allowed to inspect all these and feel the texture of the leaves in each stage.
• Then the process of roll breaking. In this, very small particles from the rolling process is separated.
• Now the tea leaves are put in open air for oxidation and the color of the leaves change.
• So the final process of complete drying of the leaves is done by sending them to high temperatures.
• Grading – graded based on the region, leaf twist etc. Each grade tea provides unique colors.  

Green Tea

Only fine leaves are segregated and used for green tea. We could not see the manufacturing of green tea as in that day only black tea and white tea are manufactured.

White Tea

White tea is prepared by collecting the fresh little buds. They are steamed to inactivate the oxidation. They are kept in a separate room to prevent the oxidation. This is done to retain high concentration of catechins (a type of antioxidant). Green tea has 80% anti-oxidants whereas white tea has 100%.

Here is the white tea served there.

The company produces about 20 million kilograms of tea every year with a workforce of 15000+ employees. White tea is not very popular in India and it is exported to European countries.

Coming out, there is a sales outlet and a display of various grades of tea. We bought orthodox black tea and tasted it too. Trust me, a pinch of orthodox tea leaves may not give you the dark tea look but the taste can never match the very famous CTC tea.