Darjeeling Tea

Almost all of the tea plants grown in Darjeeling are Chinese tea plants, grown in this area since the early 1800s. All of the different types of tea are from the same plants, but are processed differently, and sometimes use a different part of the leaf.

Black Tea- Bright green young leaves are picked, dried, rolled, fermented, and sorted

Oolong Tea- Same leaves and process, only partially fermented, makes for a milder tea

Green Tea- Same leaves and process, except leaves are not fermented at all

White Tea- Only the newest & youngest leaves, that are still partially furled, called silvertips, are used, and they are not rolled, or fermented, very delicate

The better tea leaves are left whole and loose, the lesser leaves broken up for tea bags. Since Darjeeling tea is a nicer quality, it is generally used in India for plain tea, as opposed to chai. People up here tell us Assam tea is chai tea. Not sure what people in Assam say about that. But at all the markets here they sell loose tea that is all from Assam in really small granules to be used for chai. We couldn’t really tell the difference between most of the grades of the nicer leaf teas, but they are definitely much lighter and milder than the chai tea powder, and way less caffeinated.

We could tell the difference in the flushes, or seasons, of tea, once it was explained. Spring teas (first flush) have a lighter color and taste, summer teas (second flush) darker and richer, maybe a little sweeter, and autumn teas (autumn flush) are even darker, and usually have a more intense smoky flavor. Some people say there is a monsoon flush, but a lot of the quality vendors discount that flush as irrelevant.

We never would have known any of this stuff until we had several different people go through tastings with us, at a couple of tea shops, and tea estates. Tea is almost always served in glass at the shops, so you can really see the color, and usually in plastic at the restaurants. =)

We had about 900 cups of tea while we were here. Tea with every meal, and tea in the afternoon, and tea when it was raining and we wanted to just hang out for a few and wait for better weather. Tea at the tea estates of course. We had soooo much tea. The nice part is since is doesn’t have so much caffeine we weren’t wired all the time

We bought a lot of tea. We bought several random packages from bulk vendors at the town market, or bazaar. We also bought a good bit at the tea estates we visited. Tea was for sale everywhere, tons of little shops and stalls had all kinds of tea, for all kinds of prices.

We are still trying to remember what the letters that denote the grade of tea stand for- here is one of the longer ones: SFTGFOP-1 meaning, Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Picko, Grade 1. A label on a bag of tea would typically have the flush, estate grown, and the grade.