After centuries of having their country and its tea and tea drinking culture brut- alized and attacked to the point of near total devastation, Korea’s tea industry is being slowly rebuilt and revitalized. Korea’s traditional tea and tea drinking culture is believed to have begun during the Gaya Kingdom (today part of South Korea), around 48 AD, brought by monks returning from studying at China’s great Buddhist schools and temples. |
While today much of Korea’s tea is grown in large commercial tea gardens and machine harvested, there is still a small amount of hand-plucked leaf from wild, indigenous plots of tea, some of which were planted centuries earlier.One story tells of King Heungdeok (r. 826-836) planting tea seeds on Jiri Mountain, where today large areas of wild tea still grow and are harvest- ed to make small batches of artisan tea. For the most part, |
cept for the temple gardens located in Hadong County. The Japan- ese developed many lush, cultivated tea gardens during their occupation of Korea, beginning in 1910 through its independence at the end of WWII in 1945. This is one reason the rows of tea are rounded like those in Japan, rather than flat. But that’s where the similarities end, because South Korea’s tea is uniquely theirs.All of South Korea’s tea plantations lie in the southern part of the country to the south of Chonju, with small areas of tea growing on the slopes of Chirisan, and large industrial sized tea estates in Bosong near Kangjin, and on the slopes of Wolch’ul-san in the southwest. Mostly machine-plucked tea comes from the counties of Haenum,
centuries ago monks planted tea seeds in Like China’s Qing Ming and Japan’s shincha teas, South Korea’s Mostly green teas are produced, called Nokcha which means simply “green tea.” There are two pan fired green teas.Next the leaves are removed from the heat of the pan and placed on a straw or bamboo mat After resting for a short period of time following the initial rolling To make the less common Chung-ch’a style green tea, the freshly |
A third variety of green tea that is even less common is called Jengjae-cha. It is made by steaming the leaf for 30 to 40 seconds then drying it, a method similar to Japan’s sencha production, resulting in the leaf remaining a bright green color. Jengjae-cha is similar in flavor, color, style, and character to Japan’s sencha tea.Even though the processing methods are similar to China’s pan fired and Japan’s |