Another geographical component contributes to Darjeeling tea’s unique taste. “In the south of India we have the right conditions and more sunshine,” said New Delhi tea merchant Vikram Mittal in his cluttered Sunder Nagar shop. But Darjeeling is in proximity to the snow-covered Himalayas. “It gives a ‘crisping effect’ to flavor,” he said. The cold, dry air that blows across the icy peaks wicks away the excess moisture, reduces the relative humidity, and concentrates the flavor compounds. North-facing gardens benefit most, especially in autumn.
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But terroir is only the first part of the flavor equation. The remainder resides in the way the tea leaves are cultivated, selectively plucked, and then turned into made tea. Walking among workers in a garden’s steep rows of tea bushes (grasping branches for support, to the amusement of the pluckers), visiting its small, on-site “factory” (more like a barn-size, well-lit workshop) that is the hub of every estate, or tasting the day’s finished batches of tea, one point is immediately clear: the hands-on (and nose-in) element remains fundamental to Darjeeling’s final, distinctive, and celebrated flavors.
“Darjeeling tea is special for the most important thing, the human element,” said Sujoy Sengupta. Easygoing, wearing a short-sleeved shirt in his Kolkata office during the summer heat (while many of his colleagues wore ties), he spent a dozen years on some of Darjeeling’s finest gardens before moving to the headquarters of the Chamong group.
“Plucking can only be done by hand,” he said, as machines are unable to selectively chose the right shoots that Darjeeling tea requires. “Judging fermentation can only be done by nose.” The process is tactile and intuitive. It’s about feeling the leaves as they change in texture, about smelling them. And about making often spontaneous judgment calls. “You cannot just put the leaves in huge machines and expect to make excellent Darjeeling tea,” he insisted. “The human touch is in every step.”
That begins early in cultivation. Saplings are planted out in the field, usually in April or May. A tea bush will grow into an ungainly tree and needs to be shaped into a low, flat table if it is to be plucked. After reaching about three or four feet tall, it will start getting regular pruning. This tedious and laborious work is fundamental. Such cutting encourages lateral branching, and the young trees are trained to spread and create a solid frame and high density of plucking points. When properly shaped, new shoots will appear above the level surface of the table, which pluckers can easily reach, rather than at the center of the bush. Pruning also stimulates regular flushing of the bush.
Pluckers, who are always women, do not take all of a tea bush’s leaves. The coarse leaves do not make quality teas. The women look for the tender, newer shoots that are smaller, a lighter, brighter green, and have a softer feel. They select only the first two leaves and a terminal bud at a time, a pluck called dwi paat suiro in Nepali. It is done by taking the stem between thumb and forefinger and twisting for a clean snap of the top shoot with the hand and wrist, rather than by breaking with the fingernail or clipping with sheers or any kind of blade. This is the classic Darjeeling “fine-pluck.” It requires ten thousand of these to produce a single pound of finished Darjeeling tea.
Plucking this apical part of a tea shoot stimulates growth of dormant leaves and buds. In seven days or so, new shoots appear above the plucking table as the fresh leaves and buds unfold, and the bush is picked again. This is called a plucking round. Seven days is the Darjeeling standard. Beyond that and the leaves’ quality for made tea decreases.
Older tea sections on an estate have a single hedge layout with around eight thousand plants per hectare, but new plantings normally use a double-hedge formation containing up to eighteen thousand bushes per hectare, with upper reaches and steeper slopes closer to twelve thousand. In this style, saplings are placed two feet apart in parallel rows of tea bushes along the contours, with a four-foot gap for pluckers to move, and then two more parallel rows of bushes spaced two feet apart. Planted intermittently among the tea are shade trees. These lower the temperature and raise the humidity around them, create windbreaks, and also help replace the nitrogen in the soil. These are tall, high-branching species that won’t interfere with plucking and have small leaves that won’t cover the hedges when they fall.
Making their way between rows of tight, interlocked bushes, the women pluck with both hands and, when they cannot hold any more, toss the leaves into the conical basket on their backs. The woven bamboo basket measures about eighteen inches deep, eighteen inches across the top, and tapers down to a flat bottom just eight inches wide. Depending on personal preference, they use either a loosely woven one called tokri in Nepali or one with a tighter weave called doko. The baskets are suspended not by shoulder straps like a backpack but by a thick strap of bright cloth that stretches across the top of the forehead. During the day, pluckers dump their baskets twice: once before lunch and once at the end of the day. Apart from weighing progressively more, the leaves start to chemically change once plucked and need to be processed as soon as possible.
The precariously steep terrain that adds to the unfeasibility of mechanized harvesting also makes the meticulous plucking required even more difficult. The average worker produces just 396 pounds of finished tea a year, less than a quarter of the 1,644 pounds than her Assam counterpart manages.1 (It takes five pounds of freshly plucked leaves for one pound of finished Darjeeling tea.)
Small villages are spread throughout the slopes of a garden, and women, working in groups of a dozen to twenty, generally pluck sections nearest their homes. Work starts at seven thirty A.M. There is an hour break for lunch. They walk back to their houses to prepare a quick meal or sit in a shady spot along the road and eat from a nested tiffin lunch box. Afternoon plucking lasts until four P.M. or so.
While plucking is a woman’s job, supervising them is generally considered a man’s. In 1990, the Makaibari plucker Maya Davi Chettrini became the first woman supervisor in Darjeeling. With strong, wiry arms, a buried but easily unearthed smile, and a bright vermilion bindi on her forehead, Chettrini exudes a clear sense of leadership and offers unshakable support to the women under her. She tells them which section to work, precisely which type of pluck is required—two-leaves-and-a-bud, one-leaf-and-a-bud, silver leaves (meaning bud only)—and the minimum daily picking levels. (Less, and they are docked; more and they receive a bonus.) There is no set district or even garden standard. The small leaves of the first flush mean a lower picking minimum than during the larger, more profusely flushing moments of the monsoon. A garden’s—or section’s—elevation can determine the amount, as do the style of pluck and leaf type, with the traditional China jat having smaller leaves than the Assam variety, which can also be found on most estates. The trend of women supervisors is slowly taking hold across the district.
The supervisor also makes certain that leaves are weighed and recorded correctly. Strategically located around the farm, weighment sheds are simple, open structures with corrugated-tin roofs, just enough to shelter from the sun, or the rain, and a place for the large, portable hanging scale with a hook to suspend the plucking basket.*