What Is May Tea,Why Is It Important?
May Tea, also known as the "Month of Flowers," is a favorite month for those born in May, for nature lovers, for bees, and of course, for the beloved aunties who pick tea leaves.
May is said to be the month when blind snakes awaken, raise their faces from the ground, and try to find the fennel plant by smelling it. Upon finding the fennel, the blind snake rubs its face on the plant, opens its eyes, and returns to its life above ground.
Just as fennel holds significance for the blind snake, the Camellia Sinensis plant holds the same significance for a tea enthusiast. The blind snake awakens by rubbing its face on fennel, and life resumes for it. It emerges from the ground and returns to its life with the awakening of spring.
May is a month symbolizing a return to life for living beings. People wake up every day because they haven't gone into winter hibernation, and the time they drink tea is their May.
The tea we consume year-round is harvested 3-4 times a year before processing. The most special of these harvests is the May sprout. If tea brands specify "May Sprout," the price goes up. While we're against blog posts that mix in advertisements, we must say that all of Lazika's teas are May sprout. Appreciating the value of seasonal fruits and vegetables has increased with the rise of people who long for natural and clean food. While harvesting tea outside of May shouldn't be equated with greenhouse-grown tomatoes, it's important to note that all harvests of Turkish-grown tea are valuable. This is because Turkey is the only country where tea plants receive snowfall. We can say that we're fortunate in terms of climate.
The tea plant, which shakes off the tiredness and snow of winter, sprouts fresher and stronger in May and becomes ready for the first harvest. Once you get used to the taste of May sprouts nourished by snow water and flavored by the freshness of spring, you may even delve into the realm of tea connoisseurship.
The possibility of tea production becoming industrialized and devoid of love is low, despite increasing consumption. Tea is a livelihood for many kind-hearted tea pickers. Since no technology has yet been developed for harvesting the leaves left on top, they are picked by humans. In our opinion, this is more acceptable. A tea picker feels an extra flavor in their work by thinking about the contribution they make to the table of someone they don't know.
Who knows, perhaps it's the feelings nurtured by these people that give tea its flavor. Maybe it's the spirit of May embodied in the tea leaves.