欧洲最后的两座茶园

在北岸上方的一片绿色山坡上,修剪整齐的茶树一行行顺坡而下,像用尺子画出来的长条纹,一直伸向大海。波莉落在茶园边缘一堵低矮的石墙上,望着眼前这片土地:整个欧洲大陆上,如今只剩两处还在商业化种茶的地方,而这里是唯一对外开放的一处。

On a green hillside above the northern coast, rows of clipped tea bushes ran downhill in long, tidy stripes toward the sea, almost as neat as if they had been drawn with a ruler. Polly landed on a low stone wall at the edge of the plantation and looked out over one of only two places left on the entire European continent where tea is still grown commercially, and the only one open to visitors.

茶园始于一八八三年。在那之前,柑橘是这座岛最主要的出口作物,一场病害却把橘树几乎毁尽。为了给火山土找一种新的作物,一位本地种植者引进了茶树,连同一整套用来加工茶叶的英国机器,两者此后几乎从未停止运转,这也让它成为欧洲现存最古老的茶园,而且遥遥领先。

The plantation began in eighteen eighty-three, after a disease wiped out the oranges that used to be the island's main export. Looking for something else the volcanic soil could support, a local grower imported tea bushes along with English machinery built to process them, and both have stayed in near-continuous use ever since, making this the oldest working tea estate in Europe by a wide margin.

在低矮的厂房里,一百多年前的铁制机器仍在揉捻、筛分、烘干茶叶,方式几乎和它们当年坐船抵达时一模一样。工人依旧沿着梯田用手采摘最新长出的嫩芽,因为顶端的嫩叶能做出最好的茶;这里不喷任何农药和除草剂,这条规矩从一开始就没有破过。

Inside the low factory building, iron machines more than a century old still roll, sort, and dry the leaves almost exactly as they did when they first arrived by ship. Workers still pick the newest growth by hand along the terraces, since the tender top leaves make the best tea, and nothing here is sprayed with pesticide or herbicide, a rule the growers have kept since the very beginning.

波莉沿着一层温暖的梯田慢慢走,身子擦过一排排油亮的绿叶,叶子上有淡淡的青草和雨水的气味。在山坡下面的某个地方,五代茶农守着这片山坡,让它一直保持着本来该有的样子,一次收成接着一次收成。

Polly walked along one warm terrace, brushing against rows of glossy green leaves that smelled faintly of grass and rain. Somewhere down the slope, five generations of growers had kept this hillside exactly as it was meant to be, one careful harvest at a time.