Castleton (ftgfop-1) Autumn china spl. DJ -357 Autumn Flush 2009

Castleton (ftgfop-1) Autumn china spl. DJ -357 Autumn Flush 2009


We all know that the Castleton Tea Estate in Darjeeling is best known for its china type muscatel teas which are made in 2nd Flush and some in Autumn Flush. The garden could not provide us with any of its Muscatel teas in the 2nd Flush as they were under forward contract meaning some one had booked all their muscatel teas in 2nd Flush, I constantly kept in touch with the management during the 2nd Flush but failed to get any of it and when I was offered the muscatel teas after the contract was over the monsoons had kicked in and we had to reject the teas then but I regularly kept in touch with the Manager as the muscatel character could again happen in Autumn and Castleton makes some 3000kgs of pure autumn teas and the rest are sold as pre-autumn teas, the identity of a good autumn tea from this garden is that the cup has to be golden orange in liquor and the nose has to possess a mixture of pine and muscatel flavor.
I was called to the garden by Mr. Mukhia (Manager, Castleton Tea Garden) on the 31st of October `09, Mr. Mukhia is also a family friend of us so he arranged to keep samples of 5 different china type muscatel samples and a clonal tea sample for me, they arranged a tea tasting as soon as I reached the garden, he tried his best to sell me the clonal tea which was also good too but I am honestly sick and tired of clonal teas from Castleton this year as for wholesale purpose we have brought at least 800kgs of the clonals from them, as one can guess I was there for a good muscatel tea and not the “lights and florals” anymore. After tasting the 5 muscatel tea samples I selected the invoice DJ-357 tea which was a well sorted tea, had a great Muscat grape and piney nose, the liquor was very attractive and the cup is really full flavored muscatel type but sadly this invoice consists of very limited quantity of tea, since it contains only some 90kgs in the lot, so a tea lover has to rush for this tea before this gem of a tea gets out of stock!