Category: Tea Features
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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the First Flushes
I don’t consider it spring until I’ve had a first flush Darjeeling in my mouth. This year, though, it took me a little longer to get to my “stash” of first flush Darjeelings. Most years, the family Lochan sends me a few to get the ol’ palate revved up for the year to come. And,…
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The White Teas of Araksa
The Araksa Tea Plantation is, by its own website’s declaration, one of the oldest in Chiang Mai province, Thailand. That’s not to say that it’s the oldest garden, or the oldest processor of teas. But by modern, Western-ish tea garden standards, that appears to be true. Araksa—which in Sanskrit means “Preserve”—was first plotted in 1939,…
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The Black and White of Benifuki
Benifuki is an interesting Japanese tea tree cultivar. For one, it’s a cross between a cultivar heralding from the assamica variety, and another cultivar of the sinensis variety. A cross-breeding of this sort was to create a high-yielding cultivar designed for black tea and oolong production. Back in the 1960s, and even further back, Japan…
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A Rohini White Tea Rumble
Sometimes, all it takes is a photograph to get me excited. This was posted back in November of 2017 by one Shiv Saria. The tea in question was a Darjeeling white tea hailing from the Rohini tea estate. In most cases, that would be where the story ends, but if you’ve frequented this blog enough,…
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Tea at the Temple Gates
On the odd occasion, I leave the house to hunt for tea. It’s a rare occurrence—much like a hermitic groundhog hailing the arrival of spring—but it’s been known to happen. Sometimes that urge falls upon me at night, on a Friday. And on one such night in the spring of 2018, I found myself at…
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The Invoices of Autumn
While most of the world above the equator is currently complaining about winter, my mind is still stuck in autumn. At least, that is, from a tea perspective. Of all the seasonal flushes in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, autumn is considered a dumping ground. It’s a chance for gardens to make up for any…
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A Long-Awaited Look at Latumoni
Throughout 2018, there was one name I could not escape. Latumoni. It was the name given to a village in Northeastern Assam, situated in the uppermost part of the Dibrugarh district. It was apparently so remote; it didn’t even show up as a physical location on Google Maps. (At least, not in English.) Stranger still,…
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The Smoked Darjeelings of Niroula’s Tea Farm
In November of 2012, I accidentally “created” a smoked Darjeeling. I say “accidentally” and put arbitrary air-quotes over “created” because . . . that’s only kinda what happened. One fateful day, I put a sample of Risheehat first flush—enclosed in a do-it-yourself tea bag—into a tin of loose Lapsang Souchong. Totally not thinking of the…
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The Ruckus over Ruan Zhi
Ruan Zhi—or “soft stem”— is a particular cultivated variety (or cultivar) of tea plant originally hailing from China, before making its way to Taiwan, and then migrating further along to Thailand and Myanmar . . . I think? I say “I think?” because, well, information is not all that clear about the cultivar’s origins. As…
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Going to Gopaldhara by way of Boulder, Colorado
Gopaldhara is a tea estate in the Mirik Valley in the Darjeeling district of the Indian state West Bengal. Like many such tea estates in the region, it began its life in the late 19th century. Plotted and planted by a bunch o’ Brits. It derives its name from the original owner of the land,…