Categoria: Blog

For the last day on Jeju Island we rent a car for exploring a bit more of the inland. We have heard of Seong Chul Kang, a ceramist who is inspired by the traditional Jeju Island pottery, but developing his own style. Surprisingly easy we find his studio and see him in front of his house. At first he doesn’t seem to happy to see visitors, but after explaining that we work with tea in Portugal, he opens the door inviting us to his exhibition room, which has a wonderful inspiring and cosy atmosphere.

The exhibition room is also a coffee shop. And yes I mean coffee, as in Korea like in other Asian countries, coffee is getting more and more fashion. Seong Chul Kang seems happy to hear that we really like tea, he starts preparing a green tea from a tea producer in his neighbourhood. The tea has a light green colour with an elegant nose and a wonderful sweetness in the complex palate. It reminds us of the more delicate Chinese teas, but still has an own caracter.

I am excited to see the wonderful tea ceramics, which have very well balanced dimensions. Seong Chul Kang explains me, that all his ceramic is linked to the Onggi pottery style, which uses just local clay. Originally these ceramics are bigger pots with lids to store food like rice and ferment vegetables. In front of his studio we can see the big Onggi pots, which reflect all brown earth colours. In contrast the small tea pots are very delicate. The dominating colours are brown and black. The ceramist explains that in general he do not use glaze, all the different tones are coming from different burnings. For example the black pieces he burns again and again until the colour is perfect.

For better communication he calls his wife Mi Sun Jung, who helps explaining us some more details. She herself is ceramist, but makes more sculptures. As they are busy reorganizing the studio, they have to search for more pieces, which are stored in big boxes. It all takes a while and it is not easy to choose between all the nice, but also expensive, pieces. We decide to also take some ceramics with us to start selling it in Portugal. Mi Sun Jung and me start negotiating and it takes us a while to transform the prices into dollar, but we manage.

I really have to stop myself buying more and more as I like too many pieces. We all have to laugh and drink more and more tea. In the end the two offer us a beautiful black tea container and we say good bye, hoping to see each other again.

We wake up with sun and have breakfast with a very nice view on the ocean. I am getting optimistic, that today we will find the tea plantations. We have a map and an idea where they are and after a ride with nice views on the central volcanic mountain of Jeju Island we finally see the sign to the Jeu Island Green Tea Farm.

The tea plants look less straight cut than we are used from the tea plantations in Japan. Some are with just little leaves, but the view on the surrounding mountains and the sea is just stunning. All in all the arrangement of the plants planted in rows look similar to the japanese tea plantations. We go to the little teahouse and shop, where we are invited to taste the green panfired tea.

It is interesting to see how the tea is prepared and served in comparison to Japan. In Korea they hotter water for preparing the tea in a little teapot with an integrated strainer. After a short time they pour the tea into a cooling vessel to prevent that it is getting bitter. Form the vessel they serve the tea into small tea cups. In Japan it would be the other way around. The water would first go into the cooling vessel, for than preparing the tea with the just slightly hot water in the also small teapot (kyusu) with the handle on the side.

We are pretty much surprised of the fresh green flavour of the tea. At first we are a bit irritated that they name it roasted green tea. The delicate flavour has nothing to do with the slightly roasted Houjicha tea we know from Japan. Than we get to know Mr. Go, who works already for a long time at the plantation. He explains to us, that these teas are not steamed, but prepared in a fired pan like in China. That explains why they name their teas roasted tea.

Mr. Go tells us, that the whole plantation was planted at once 20 years ago all plants are the japanese variety Yabukita. In Jeju Tea Maze Garden all teas are hand picked and than produced by hand in the fired pans. Out of 1 kilogram picked leaves they get about 200g tea. For the premium tea they just pick the very tiny buts. Than these fragile leaves are processed with biggest care. We buy a 20g bag of this very expensive tea and another bay of the medium and average quality, which we are looking forward to taste.

Than we have Korean lunch and green tea ice cream for desert, which is not as delicious and creamy as we know it from Japan.

With new energy we start searching for the other tea plantation, we have heard of. It takes us a while to find it, but than we see the big shaded (kabuse) fields, we know from Japan. A bit unsure, if we can drive through or not, we pass the open gate without any sign. We are pretty much surprised by the extension of the tea fields, which are almost all covered by black shading nets. In the distance we see working three of the harvesting machines we know from Japan. The dimension of this tea plantation is really big.

When we reach the tea fabric we see a truck unloading the tealeaves. It smells and looks very much like Yabukita. Unfortunately it is not possible to communicate to the workers as they don’t speak English. Later two young Korean ladies, which are here on holiday, explain us that we can not bur tea here at the fabric, but at the Shop at the Ossoluc Tea Museum. It looks like that the tea harvested and produced here is part of the Ossoluc tea production. For tomorrow we have an appointment at Ossoluc and for sure will find out more details. We are curious to taste more Korean green tea and are looking very much forward for tomorrow.

After a long journey we arrived well on Jeju Island. The South Korean Island is very close to Kyushu and also of volcanic origem. But unfortunately from Miyazaki we can’t go straight to Jeju Island. We have to take three flights and for approximately 400km areal distance, we take more than 12 hours. We arrive in the darkness of the night at the hotel, but in the morning the sun wakes us up.

As the island is bigger than we have imagined, we decide to rent a car or a motorcycle. As it is the Golden Week, the main holiday for Japanese and Korean people, it is not so easy to get something and we end up with a scooter. We start exploring the island, but instead of tea we find oranges, oranges and more oranges. They are planted all over and a lot of them are grown in green houses. The wonderful perfume of the orange flowers is with us almost the whole day. And we discover very delicate dried oranges and all kind of orange sweets.