Balasun and Sungma 1st Flush Darjeeling tea 2009
Its been a real adventure this 1st Flush choosing the right teas, now I would say it was easy to choose the high quality and expensive teas but getting some lower priced teas was a real challenge, and some average priced teas are also required to complete the list of teas this season, so we ordered samples from various plantation, like Thurbo, Goomtee, Arya and Singbulli, but all the teas from the month of April showed very dark appearances, I would rather call it a burnt and dehydrated character, I specially had great expectations from the Singbulli plantation but all the 6 or 7 samples did not do any wonders for me, so I finally called up Mr. A.K. Jha ( Superintendent) of Sungma and Balasun Tea Estates, he had send us many samples, some were teas from pure china bushes and some were assamese hybrid bushes but more or less the teas were not up to the mark but I could finally choose 2 teas from Balasun and Sungma and would say it was a complete luck for me to get these teas, as these 2 teas were exceptionally excellent during this period of time, the 1st one is Sungma sftgfop-1 china classic Dj-16, an excellent offering having slightly darker leafs and has a well twisted leafs and full sized buds, the cup is pungent and smooth with hints of young pears without any bitterness, the other one is my personal favourite,the Balasun sftgfop-1 china classic Dj-16,it’s a really excellent tea having very bright leafs and small sized shiny sliver tips, the cup is extravagantly fruity and the after taste is extremely mellow, so I must say that even in low price I could offer 2 great teas in this hard harvest season

Darjeeling tea 2009: 1st Flush selections get even better

Darjeeling tea 2009: 1st Flush selections get even better


I think this year we have tasted more than 60 samples to get some 5-7 teas in our list of 1st Flush 2009 teas. Well talking about that I cannot stop myself from writing about our Gopaldhara clonal classic ftgfop-1 DJ-3 tea, actually we have been tasting tea samples from Gopaldhara tea estate since last Second Flush 2008 but I was not excited with any of their teas so one fine day Rishi (the owner of Gopaldhara) called me up asking why I was not ordering any teas from them and I told him the reasons that was stopping me from promoting any of their teas, so he promised me that he would send some good Gopaldhara tea samples that could fit in my list of fine Darjeeling teas, so during the 3rd week of March as usual I received a large sample packet of Gopaldhara tea samples and as usual I thought it would contain teas that would not fit my taste buds, but my father asked me to open the tea sample packet and we went through at least 6-7 Gopaldhara and Rohini tea sample but none of the teas were appealing, at the corner of the sample packet there was this Gopaldhara ftgfop-1 clonal classic DJ-3 tea sample pouch, so to give it a try I opened the sample pounch and WOW!…..I was excited to see this tea, this was exactly what we were looking forward to, in this hard season ,it was hard withered to keep that greenish and tender look on the tea and one should also consider the hard withered teas in this season as it’s a sacrifice of quantity when the tea is hard withered meaning the quantity of tea leaves goes down. The dry leafs were amazing and with a slight blow of warm air from the mouth on the leafs gave out a very fruity aroma and when the tea is further brewed for about 4-5 minutes, the cup immediately give out some refreshing fruity flavor with slight hints of young green bananas and white grapes, must say ….an absolute beautiful tea of the season!
Also on the other side I agree that good teas are available in a very limited quantity this 1st Flush season but one cannot say they are not available at all, I was very sad to see blogs written by so called tea wise people that the 1st Flush 2009 Darjeeling teas are not very good, well I don’t mind consumers writing about it as they get this news through some news website or magazine etc. who keep their homework incomplete, but even tea merchants write this type of blogs which even they know that is not fully true and by writing this they get an advantage of getting rid of their old teas in the same high price and may be they do not want to spend their money on good teas as good teas costs good price…..anyways I`m proud to write that I’ve been able to cater good teas this season too as its been over 1 month that I been tasting various samples and choosing the right teas and also I’ve been able to prove the point wrong that 1st Flush 2009 Darjeeling teas are not up to the quality level due to drought, I would request all tea lovers to follow their own mind and choose teas from us instead of following blogs of people who have no idea about what they are blogging about…or may be merchants who are blogging to escape the heat of investment for good teas this season!