A half hour or so before the tasting begins, an assistant begins setting out small infusion pots and cups in a straight line along the counter, one pair for each of the day’s batches. The white porcelain cups show off best a tea’s color when “cupping” it, as professionals call tea tasting. The white rims have been worn down, revealing earthy, reddish clay beneath the glaze. But they are spotlessly clean, with no trace of residual odors. Faint cracks stained black from years of tea spread around the inside of the cups like a fine netting.
The infusion pots are white, ceramic, and individual-size and hold, if filled to the brim, 180 ml (¾ cup) of liquid. Most are small, handleless pitchers with short spouts and a fitted lid with an inset rim, Indian-made and bought in one of the wholesale shops on a side street near the Tea Board of India headquarters in Kolkata. The other style, made in Sri Lanka, is more expensive but smoother. Instead of a spout, these have five sharp, V-shaped notches like the jagged teeth of a Halloween pumpkin carved by a seven-year-old. The matching cups of both versions are almost perfectly spherical and also without handles, akin to small, white tea bowls.
A foil packet or a little, round metal tin behind each holds a small amount of dry leaf. Lying atop the leaves is a slip of paper that identifies by number and letter codes the batch, grade, leaf type, and amounts. These can be checked in a ledger to find out the section of origin in the garden and the precise timings of withering, rolling, fermentation, and firing.
With an electric silver kettle filled and heating, the assistant takes a portable, brass, handheld balance scale and begins working down the line of infusion pots like Lady Justice, measuring out a generous pinch of dry tea leaves in one tray so that it equals the weight of the other, which holds an old Indian twenty-five-paise coin weighing precisely 2.5 grams (just a touch over one twelfth of an ounce, or a smidge more than an American dime), the customary counterbalance across Darjeeling.
Once each of the pots has its exact measure of dry leaf and the kettle reaches a boil, the assistant pours 150 ml (⅔ cup) water over the leaves and then covers the pots with their ceramic lids. An hourglass timer is turned over, and the tea is left to infuse as the sand drains though the narrow waist. Five minutes is standard. Some tasters, although preferring to steep for three to four minutes when preparing a cup at home, always test at this length of time.
The differences between the batches of tea during a single day are slight at best—but important. Weight, time, and amounts must be precise. Consistency is everything.
One by one, the liquors are poured out into the small, white tea bowls, the lid held tight with the fingers and the pot then propped horizontally into the bowl. The size is perfect: the infusion pot lies snugly in the bowl with the lid firmly pinched shut as it completely drains, with the trapped leaves acting as a natural strainer.
Going back to the beginning of the row, the assistant places the pots upright and checks the liquors in the bowls to see if any leaves have escaped. As these would continue to strengthen the brew, the liquor gets drained into a clean cup if needed. Each cup now holds tea quite similar in tone.
By the time the tea has been cupped, the manager and assistant manager, and perhaps the factory or production managers, have gathered in the room.
Like his colleagues on gardens across Darjeeling, Dhancholia works from left to right in deft and brusque movements. He vigorously shakes the last of the liquid from the pitcher, spraying the wooden floor (and his shoes) with fine droplets of tea, then turns over the lid, which holds the wet leaves in a neat mound: the infusion. He sticks his nose into the warm, limp leaves to take in the full range of aromas, from sweet and malty to fruity, lime blossom to tarry. In the infusion, he can gauge if the firing has been right. Acrid notes, burnt tones, and stewiness indicate that the firing has been too hot or too long, with too much moisture zapped from the overtoasted leaf. The reversed pot lid is set on top of the infuser pot, displaying the damp leaves.
The dry leaf is also examined for the color—shades of grays, greens, and browns—and size of the rolled leaf. “The appearance tells you whether you’ve withered it right. It’ll tell you if you’ve rolled right,” explained Sanjay Sharma at Glenburn during a warm but drizzly late-second flush tasting. “You want that twist and style.” He held a handful of dry leaf on a stiff sheet of white cardboard and sifted a pinch through his fingers. He snapped the cardboard taunt a couple of times, making the leaves dance while checking their sort. A loud, vintage air-raid siren sounded across the estate. The lunch break was over. A number of pluckers carrying faded umbrellas passed by the tasting-room window en route to a field just below the factory. “It will tell you if you sorted it right. Sorting is basically about size.” Part for quality and taste, part for aesthetics. “You don’t want your teas looking like long-grain basmati rice, you know,” he said with a smile. “That would be boring.”
It’s also important to check what H. R. Chaudhary at Namring calls “the cleanness of leaf,” checking for any stems or twigs, as well as the percentages of tips (buds), for fine-plucking.
Again starting with the teas on the left, Dhancholia moves to the liquor itself. He is looking at its color, briskness, quality, and strength. After noting the shiny clarity and depth of color in the liquor, he takes in the aroma. He leans in close, nearly doubling over his tall frame, with one arm held tightly behind his back in the position of a speed skater. In the other hand he holds a large spoon like a pencil and stirs and splashes the liquid to get the aromas flying around. His nose is visibly sniffing in the various scents among waves of tea spilling over the rim as he moves from cup to cup in rapid succession down the line. Nothing in his actions is delicate—or haphazard. It’s messy, and the Rajasthan-born Dhancholia wears an apron made of a tight blue-and-white-check material like that of picnic tablecloths and a matching cap that comes down low on his forehead and sits like a moppy beret.
Finally, back at the first cup, he tastes the tea. He loudly slurps a generous mouthful of liquid off the spoon. Holding it for a moment, he takes two or three quick and sharp aerating sucks that flood the liquor around the palate and send it up into the olfactory organ in the nose in the manner of an animated wine taster. The tip of the tongue gauges sweetness and saltiness, the middle tartness, the back bitterness, and the back edges sourness. But he is also feeling the tea: the inside of the gums, cheeks, and the back of the tongue catch the astringency or pungency by sensation rather than taste. Tannins are responsible for the penny-brownish color of liquor and the astringency that gives tea its body and bite—its briskness. In a final exhale, Dhancholia spits out the mouthful of tea in a powerful stream into a tall, steel spittoon locally called a gaboon. He hesitates for a beat, gathering last impressions from the residual flavors on his palate, and then moves to the next. It’s all over in a few seconds. The mouth has registered the flavor, briskness (the opposite of flat or soft), pungency, and strength and caught any flaws.
And so on down the row of cups lined up along the counter, quickly, quietly, gruffly, keeping within the spell of the tasting in an almost hurried sense of trying to hold a complete set of impressions before any distraction can occur and break their imprint.
Outside the tasting room, Dhancholia is quiet and unassuming, soft-spoken. In a film, he might be cast as a provincial high school music teacher who coaxes greatness from his charges through subtlety, sensitivity, and talent. His physical, almost aggressive style of tasting seems at first out of character, until one understands that the seriousness he puts to the daily task drives him to literally jam his nose into warm leaves and splashing tea. Tasting demands complete focus. He calls the concentration required “a type of meditation.”