Today is the 26th of May`07 and we have finally crossed the so called “Banjee” period which is rather a cursed period for both the tea planter and the seller, we have been flooded with samples from various plantations in Darjeeling.
The first sample, we tasted in this 2nd Flush is Risheehat (sftgfop-1) clonal flowery, this tea had a very good blossom and the overall value in the dry leaf state was good, but when I steeped the tea and made a cup, the tea spoke for itself, sadly it had a very weak liquor and the aroma was very weak too, so this is a clear sign of “treated 2nd Flush” meaning the tea had been given extra fermentation and firing than usual to get the 2nd Flush character, the china musk of the same plantation also did not impress me much as the liquor was a bit too dark than the usual muscatel teas so this did create a lot of difference to get a proper 2nd Flush muscatel character in the tea.
I `m sorry to say that I cannot write about all the teas that I tasted but I’m trying to bring out the current scenario about the teas which are known by our most valued customers.
Regarding the Castleton teas, first of all lets talk about the clonals, well we tasted about 9 samples of the Castleton Tippy clonal ftgfop-1 and clonal ftgfop-1 but this did not impress me much as in 2nd Flush I`m looking for something which is coppery in cup and I`m sick and tired of tasting light and bright stuffs…
But again while I liked the china special teas and specially talking about the world famous Castleton Muscatel ftgfop-1 teas, the lines were great, as it has finally found back its actual character after a long time, I`m definitely going to get an invoice of this type for my tea loving customers…
Talking about Jungpana and Goomtee teas, well all tea lovers know about these garden`s products, well initially when I first tasted some Jungpana samples I was not happy as it still had some green leafs which is of coarse not a good sign of good 2nd Flush and also I complained against the price as I strictly believe in “value for money” teas…. but not to worry while I tasted the next following samples after the initial one I was very happy with the teas, it had the usual Jungpana character of Muscatel and Floral notes, I`m trying my best to have a great tea from this garden……..Talking about Goomtee its nice to see better invoices from this garden than last year, specially the Muscatel variety which had a good body too,I`ve send my bid for this tea and I`m going to try my best to have this particular invoice in my list…
On the other hand I`m very sad to write about the Phuguri Tippy clonal ftgfop-1 teas this year as till date I’ve not been able to get even 1 sample that suits my palate though this tea was one of the best seller of last year’s 2nd Flush, I`m a bit nervous for this tea but I’ve a started searching for a better alternative for this tea…
