Glossary

Harvest & Flushes

Plucking

The act of harvesting tea leaves by hand or by machine.

Hand-plucking lets pickers select only the right leaf-and-bud sets and keeps leaves intact for orthodox processing. Machine plucking is faster and cheaper but bruises and rips the leaves, suiting CTC production. Most specialty tea is still hand-picked.

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Related terms

Words that travel together.

Two Leaves and a Bud

The classic ideal pluck — the topmost unopened bud plus the two youngest leaves below it.

CTC

'Crush, Tear, Curl' — the industrial process that produces small uniform pellets for tea bags.

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