India – Page 19 – Discovering Tea

First flush Darjeelings: the good way to infuse them

13 March 2012

If there’s a group of teas that is particularly sensitive to the infusion time, it’s the Darjeelings. Thirty seconds too long and your tea will be bitter due to excessive astringency. First flush Darjeelings must be infused correctly: the water should be around 85 degrees and the infusion time should be between 3’30 and 3’45 maximum. With Darjeelings, the flavour and aroma balance is very delicate, so to appreciate them fully, you’d be wise to heed this friendly advice.

While you’re waiting for your tea to infuse, you can follow my example and have fun taking a picture of the timer. This rather rustic one reigns in the tasting room on the Barnesbeg Tea Estate (India).

I’ve just bought the first tea of the year

9 March 2012

I’ve just received the first samples of the Darjeeling spring teas, or “first flush”. The buds on the plants are very small, and the shoots are still a little slow due to the generally cool winter. The temperature is still too low to allow an abundant crop. Nonetheless, certain planters have produced some wonderful teas.

I’ve just bought the first tea of the year – a very small lot of just 15kg – from the Teesta Valley Tea Estate. This is a lovely plucking, with leaves just lightly rolled, giving a fresh infusion that is both vegetal and fruity, and a supple liquor with pronounced vegetal and almond notes. A pure delight.

To accompany your tea tasting, here is a view of the Teesta Valley Estate itself. It offers the same roundness and sweetness as well as the famous vegetal note… It’s as if the landscape itself was reflected in our cups.

To find good teas, one must be patient

6 March 2012

I don’t need to teach you tea drinkers to be patient. You know how to take time choosing your tea, to prepare it in the right way, steeping the leaves in water that is not too hard or too hot, allowing the leaves to infuse for the right length of time.

In a few days we will be able to try the first samples of the spring teas. However, it’s not always the first that are the best, and sometimes – but not always – it’s better to wait for the next day’s harvest.

Here is a view of Darjeeling for you to contemplate while you wait to try these leaves being harvested at the moment, right here, on these misty hillsides.

The first harvest of the year is about to start

2 March 2012

When I ask planters in Darjeeling when they will begin the first pluckings of the year, they always gives roughly the same reply: around the time of the Holi Festival. Holi takes place in India every year at the beginning of spring. It’s the festival of colours. To celebrate, everyone arms themselves with plenty of coloured pigments and throws them in the faces of people around them. Throughout the day, they cover their laughing friends – and anyone else they come across – in a riot of colours.

With its coat of bright pink and orange, this elegant creature climbing over a tea bud looks like it has been taking part in Holi. The tea harvest is surely about to start.

Two good reasons to drink tea

21 February 2012

Does tea help the kidneys work better? Does it aid weight loss? Fight cancer? Do some teas contain more or less theine? These were some of the questions posed by the audience in the French television programme “Allo Docteurs”, which I appeared on last week. A nutritionist was also in the studio to answer health-related questions.

It’s always good to know that tea is a healthy drink. “A little tea every day keeps the doctor away,” say the Chinese. However, as far as I’m concerned, the most important quality of tea is the gastronomic pleasure we derive from it.

As I don’t have a photo showing the condition of the arteries of a regular tea drinker, I’m instead showing you this hand reaching for a cup, which I think perfectly reflects the pleasure of drinking tea.

The little Darjeeling train manoeuvring in the street

17 February 2012

I stand back to let the little Darjeeling train past, the famous “Toy Train”. I do so quickly as it isn’t always easy to know which direction it is travelling in. The whistle blows and amidst a terrible racket, here it is starting to gather speed. It is manoeuvring right in the middle of the street, surrounded by people and traffic. We can guess from the tense face of the driver, who has his back to the engine and is steaming straight ahead, that it isn’t an easy task.

The tea fields need looking after in winter too

14 February 2012

During the winter months, tea plants grow very little, if at all. So this is the time to work on maintaining the land, such as the cuttings garden, for example. This is an area planted with bushes from which cuttings are taken. The plants are therefore chosen with great care. Each parent tea plant, like here in the cuttings garden at the Namring Tea Estate (India), can provide between 50 and 300 cuttings a year.

How to warm up with tea

7 February 2012

With the cold you are battling in France at the moment, you need to keep warm. Always have to hand a kettle filled with fresh water. A singing kettle, for example, whose song warms the soul and lifts the spirits.

A song calling you for tea.

Everywhere in India you see tea vendors in the streets and on the roadsides. With a kettle purring over what are sometimes simple wood fires, they are always busy. On the roads of the Himalayas, they might set up stall on the corner of a rock. You squat down next to the vendor and take your time sipping the scalding blend of tea, milk and spices. You simply take time to do yourself some good.

The lifespan of a tea plant: between 30 and 50 years

27 January 2012

Everything comes to an end. When a tea plant no longer produces many leaves, it is replaced. The lifespan of a tea plant is quite variable, generally between 30 and 50 years, although China claims to have some that are a thousand years old.

The trunk and roots of the tea plant burn well, and heat the oven in which the tea leaves are dried after oxidisation, for example.

A planter’s estate typical of the British era

20 January 2012

When the British were in charge of tea production they created vast estates and put in place systems to manufacture large quantities of tea. On each estate they built a bungalow, which might be small or large, for the planter. Today, in India and Sri Lanka, for example, you still see these buildings that are typical of the British era. I am often invited by planters to stay in their bungalows, like this one in Amgoorie (India), which is generally considered to be one of the finest.