Orthodox Processing

Definition

Orthodox is the tea trade's name for the traditional way of making black tea, as opposed to CTC. The sequence is withering, rolling, oxidation and drying. Rolling machines twist the leaf under pressure to break cells while keeping it in long, wiry pieces. The rolled leaf is often sieved and rolled again, then laid out to oxidize before being dried in hot-air dryers. The finished tea is sorted by size into whole-leaf, broken-leaf, fannings and dust grades. The method replicated by machine what Chinese makers did by hand, and was adopted by British planters in Assam, Darjeeling and Ceylon in the nineteenth century. Darjeeling, Nilgiri highland estates, Sri Lankan high-grown tea and most Chinese black teas such as Keemun and Dian Hong are orthodox. Many Assam estates make both orthodox and CTC. Because the leaf stays more intact, orthodox tea infuses more slowly and keeps more aroma: floral, muscatel, fruit, honey or cocoa, depending on origin. The trade sometimes uses "orthodox" more loosely to mean any whole-leaf tea that is not CTC, including oolong and green tea, but in the black tea market it means this particular rolled-leaf process.