Sabah Tea Garden located at Ranau district overlooking Mount Kinabalu. A trip to Sabah Tea Garden takes about 3 hours from Kota Kinabalu. Once you reached the Sabah Tea Garden, you will be welcomed by the sprawling tea garden and surrounding pristine rainforest.
Sabah Tea Garden is the only organic tea farm on Borneo Island. Unlike most brands of tea, Sabah Tea consists of only tea leaves picked from its own 2,480-hectare plantation and this allows them to protect their tea’s quality of origin and ensure that the leaves are 100% pesticide free!
A new Tea adventure program at Sabah Tea Garden
Instead of the usual factory tour, visitors to Sabah Tea Garden now have the chance to make their own tea, from tea plucking till creating their own tea. Our host invites us to harvest the fresh young shoots of the plant. Different types of teas are created through different methods and degree of oxidation of the tea leaves.
We were introduced to the popular green tea and Oolong tea making. Green tea has a minimal amount of oxidation, halted by additional pan-frying (Chinese teas) or steaming (Japanese) steps. The additional processing brings out more flavor and allows for caffeine to develop, at the cost of a reduction in antioxidants. Oolong tea gets partial fermentation, and often an additional shaking/bruising step that releases additional flavors. Oolong can range in color from dark green to black. The combination of bruising and partial fermentation give many oolongs distinct flowery & earthy flavors.
Sabah Tea Garden introduced Tea Adventure in the Borneo Rainforest program which includes tea adventure program in Oolong Tea and Green Tea.
2 leaves and a bud, we got to experienced plucking Camellia sinensis leaves from the trees.
Our harvest of the day. The freshly plucked tea leaves are left to wither overnight.
After withered overnight, the tea leaves are ready to be roasted and steamed.
the traditional way of roasting Oolong Tea, using hand toasting the tea leaves over the hot wok.
the leaves are then rolled using hand
To make green tea, the process is slightly different. The tea leaves are steamed over a steamer.
green tea is moister as it is steamed. The tea leaves are rolled using the hand.
After all the tea leaves are rolled, the tea leaves are sent to the factory to be dried
Few things we learned at Sabah Tea Garden.
-The old trees produce higher quality leaves.
– high altitude teas are generally superior in terms of quality
– wild tree plants can be up to 9 meters high but on tea plantations, they are cut back to a bush of about a meter in height so that workers can pluck the leaves easily.
Tea Adventure at Sabah Tea Garden Video
Sabah get its own Certificate of accomplishment! Thanks to Sabah Tea for the experience and it certainly make us appreciate tea more. We should be proud of Sabah Tea as they consistently produce good quality tea for us over the years. If you are interested to know more about Sabah Tea and activities at Sabah Tea Garden, you can contact Email: info@sabahtea.net Tel: +6 088 440 882
Joanne Lee
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