Monday, March 19, 2012

Thurbo (Spring Delight) sftgfop-1/EX-2 -1st Flush darjeeling tea 2012



Thurbo (Spring Delight) sftgfop-1 / Ex -2:
The Thurbo Tea Estate is one of the largest tea gardens in Darjeeling. It is located in the mirik valley of Darjeeling and produces about four hundred thousand kilograms of tea annually. This year the 1st flush started a bit late due to cold temperatures and less rainfall. Almost all the gardens in mirik valley started their production in the 2nd week of March but the batches that rolled out of the gardens were small lots of 20-40 kgs. This is about 60% lesser than the usual.
We were constantly receiving samples from various plantations of Darjeeling but we were waiting for the right one and we had a lot of high expectations for good teas from Thurbo tea estate since this garden has been consistently making very nice teas even during the draught which occurred in the last 1st flush harvest. We tasted lots of clonals, hybrids and china samples from this garden until we came across this Thurbo (Spring Delight) Ex2 lot which is the first pure 1st flush 2012 batch of tea from this garden which has no mixture of winter leafs at all.
This particular batch is actually made from 2 types of premium clonal leafs i.e. the P312 clone and T4 clone. The P312 clone is famous for its flowery character .The T4 is a clone which was born or made in the Thurbo tea garden itself and is known for its bold silver tips and fruity flavors.
This excellent tea is very well sorted and has a unique fruity fragrance of ripe mangoes and sugarcane in the dry leaf state. When steeped for about 3 minutes it gives very bright liquor in the cup. Each sip is extremely smooth and leaves a soft flavor of marigold flower as an after taste. This is real nectar from the nature. A great tea for a tea lover!