Tea farm in Portugal

Travel logs and questions
Post Reply
gatmcm
Posts: 120
Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:06 am
Location: Porto, Portugal
Contact:

Fri Nov 10, 2017 12:05 pm

I got to visit a tea farm here in Portugal last month, it's located close to Porto, they are aiming to make Japanese style tea.

Part of the plantation is in rows like this using the field that used to be a vineyard with fruit trees on each side (mostly apples and pears), you can see the difference between the plants propagated by seed and stake, stake plants are clones so they are all the same height and have the same leaf size leading to a neat looking hedge like you see in bigger plantations.

Propagated from seed:
semente.jpg
semente.jpg (438.88 KiB) Viewed 2825 times
Propagated by stakes:
estaca.jpg
estaca.jpg (468.49 KiB) Viewed 2825 times
The plantation aside from the ex-vineyard rows are in an open field:
campo.jpg
campo.jpg (491.09 KiB) Viewed 2825 times

The trees are still very young, the older ones were about 4 years old so they are just starting.
They are fully organic, for pest control the bushes are sprayed with a herbal mix (mostly chamomile) from time to time but what makes the difference according to them is the biodiversity, the different kinds of trees and bugs around mitigate pests and diseases associated with intensive single crop farming.

Sadly didn't take a lot more pictures because of my crappy phone, oh well, hopefully I'll visit again

Here's the project's web page https://chacamelia.com/en/project/about-us/
User avatar
Victoria
Admin
Posts: 3043
Joined: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:33 pm
Location: Santa Monica, CA
Contact:

Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:36 pm

Wow, very interesting what this couple are doing, out on a limb sort of. The tea plants propagated from seed look super healthy, and smart idea to consult with the Morimotos. So do you think they plan to steam their leaves as in Japanese sencha? Enjoyed the video as well, Portuguese from Portugal is so smooth 🍃
gatmcm
Posts: 120
Joined: Wed Oct 11, 2017 5:06 am
Location: Porto, Portugal
Contact:

Fri Nov 10, 2017 7:04 pm

Victoria wrote:
Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:36 pm
Wow, very interesting what this couple are doing, out on a limb sort of. The tea plants propagated from seed look super healthy, and smart idea to consult with the Morimotos. So do you think they plan to steam their leaves as in Japanese sencha?
I tasted a bit of green tea they made and it was steamed like sencha but whole leaf, it produced a very smooth tea with no bitterness at all even brewed at ~90ºC but still retaining a sencha flavour profile, it was a bit weak though, maybe using gong fu parameters would liven it up or maybe it was a result of sencha processing without cutting the leaf, I don't know a lot about Japanese teas so I don't know how common that is.
I'm sure it will improve as they are able to produce more of it.
Victoria wrote:
Fri Nov 10, 2017 3:36 pm
Enjoyed the video as well, Portuguese from Portugal is so smooth 🍃
She has quite a bit of german accent so it might not be the best case to compare Portuguese and Brazilian accents :lol:

Found another pic, of a tea flower:
flor.jpg
flor.jpg (293.9 KiB) Viewed 2815 times
Post Reply