Cameron Highlands — Lisa's (& Steve's) Travels

This area of Malaysia is about 120 miles north of Kuala Lumpur, and at 3-4,000 ft of elevation. It was SO much cooler than at sea level (where we’d been sweltering for the last 6 weeks). Daily temps in the rest of Malaysia were usually around 90, while here they were in the low 70’s. Besides tourism, the main business here is growing tea…

… and strawberries.

The latter are grown in large “greenhouses” covering acres of hillsides…

Another view, showing tea in the foreground and strawberries in the distance on the right (under the white plastic coverings) -

We did a tour of the largest tea plantation in the area (BOH Tea). Besides being very photogenic…

… it was also quite informative. BOH is not a surname, but stands for “best of highlands”. Tea bushes are not harvested for the first four years (then produce for 100 years!), but are kept trimmed to about waist-high:

The new shoots of the topmost leaves are then hand plucked (for the finest teas), or sheared by two people on either side of the bushes moving a large set of scissors over the tops. Our driver for the morning told us that tea leaves can be harvested every 21 days from the same bush.

After harvest, the leaves are “withered” for 20 hours to reduce moisture content and remove the “leafy” taste. They are then rolled and compressed to “liberate the enzymes and juices”. Fermentation (oxidization) is done by spreading them out on trays for varying lengths of time. Green tea is not fermented at all. Drying (quickly, over 10 minutes) stops the fermentation process and reduces moisture content from 60% to 3%. Sorting is done by passing them through a series of vibrating sieves, separating out stalks and fibers. I found it interesting that tea bags are filled with “Tea Bag Dust”, one of the lowest categories.

All of that information above came from a series of posters outside the factory. We were told not to take pictures inside the factory. Hopefully, this panorama will translate well here -