“This has changed the complexion of the game,” says Sanjay Kapur.
The emergence of Tata Global Beverages as the chief Darjeeling buyer for teas to be sold on the domestic market has been the major factor in the rise of auction prices of leaf-grade Darjeeling from Rs 204.67 per kilo in 2006 to Rs 490.93 in 2012, said Choudhury.
This has given an opening for individual estates to penetrate the Indian market. Darjeeling’s gardens don’t have money to individually promote their brand abroad because their production and resources are too small, and they generally need to rely on importers for that—namely the German importers, who many fear will lose interest in the teas once the PGI kicks into force.
But with the country’s quickly expanding middle class and a larger product awareness among local consumers, Rishi Saria sees the Indian market as the place to focus his efforts. To spread the Gopaldhara brand and get closer to local clients, his family’s company has begun selling tea online direct and opening up a handful of small retail outlets. Other individual gardens have been making similar small moves toward accessibility to directly target Indian customers.
Another significant change in the Indian market has been the recent craze for Darjeeling’s green teas.
“We used to sell one kind of green tea,” said Girish Sarda at Nathmulls in Darjeeling. “We couldn’t get a whole invoice [about 150 kilograms] so we used to beg for one case [about 25 kilograms] and then take all year to sell it. Now we are selling ten to fifteen types. And buying complete invoices.” Most of their walk-in customers come in looking for green tea, Sarda said. “They might buy black tea, but first they ask for green.”
Numerous green-and-yellow billboard ads appear along Hill Cart Road promoting Nathmulls’ “heritage shop,” which Nathmull Sarda opened in 1931. It remains the most distinguished tea retailer in the city. Girish is the fourth generation of Sardas to run it. “It’s in the blood,” he said. He stood behind the counter, arms slightly spread and palms on the glass case. A trio of young men in jeans patiently measured out tea into small gold-foil packets, tied them in a cross of white string, and packed them snugly into boxes to airfreight out to online customers. Honking cars passed along the steep Laden-la Road just a foot or so from Nathmulls’ always-open door.
“Health,” said Sarda. “That’s what green teas are all about.” Drinking tea for medicinal benefits goes back to its earliest days in ancient China and Japan, and even in Europe. While an ever-increasing number of scientific studies are proving the health benefits of tea, some of the claims being put forward today in India sound almost as miraculous as Thomas Garway’s seventeenth-century promises.
Nathmulls has printed a small brochure entitled “Green Tea: Your Prescription to Good Health,” which gets included with each package and offered on the counter in the shop. Folded in half and smaller than the palm of a hand, it has the Darjeeling logo at the top, a two-leaves-and-a-bud pluck at the bottom, and a pair of red crosses bookending “Good Health” in the title. It includes a short legend of the tea’s healthy properties and also directions for preparation, but the bulk consists of eleven block paragraphs, a lengthy sentence or two each, on health:
GREEN TEA, being un-fermented, is a very rich source of ANTI-OXIDANTS.
TANINS (Polyphenols) namely EPICATECHINS and EPI GALLO CATECHIN GALLATE (EGCG) are among the strongest ANTI-OXIDANTS, active against many forms of Cancer and they also block the spread of the HIV Virus that causes AIDS.
When applied to the skin, they offer protection from free radicals present in sunlight and ultra-violet radiation, that damages the DNA cells, causing Cancer. These TANINS reverse pre-cancerous skin changes. QUERCETIN, another chemical found in tea, particularly inhibits the grown of Leukemia cells, thus preventing Blood Cancer.
It continues with terms in capital letters that the buying public may not know but sound sufficiently medically important.
Drinking tea can help control the Influenza Virus, restrain the growth of the Herpes Simplex Virus and can be helpful in checking Chronic Viral Hepatitis. The FLAVONOIDS also help relieve the oxidative stress to the eye lens, thereby lowering the risk of contracting Cataract.
And on, through a litany of diseases, with the promise of lowering the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s to controlling tooth decay and “slowing the onset of Atherosclerosis and Heart Disease.”
As green tea’s popularity has come full circle regarding the public’s perception of its health properties, so have these selling points returned to the domain of local marketers, in their pamphlets and promises of cure-alls.
This surge in popularity has shifted the types of teas many estates produce. Green teas fit neatly into Darjeeling’s harvesting cycle. During the monsoon, the leaves are at their largest and least flavorful of the year; withering in the humidity is extremely difficult, and fermentation is tricky. Many monsoon teas sell below production cost because of the lack of interest from big-spending buyers. They fetch between a quarter and one half of the price of tea from the first two flushes and are used almost exclusively in blends.
Green teas offer an ideal option for Darjeeling gardens that sell their monsoon-flush black teas so cheaply. Being neither withered nor fermented, green teas are easier to make during the rainy season. The leaves are simply steamed to arrest any fermentation, rolled, and then fired.
Some tea experts, though, consider them simply monsoon filler and are far from enamored with the outcome. “You can’t control quality during the monsoon,” said Girish Sarda. As with Darjeeling’s black teas, the best greens, he insisted, are from the other flushes. Indeed, demand has been strong enough for a couple of Darjeeling’s top estates to begin producing limited amounts of green teas during their premium first two flushes—and getting premium prices for them.
Sitting along the glass counter at Nathmulls are ten jars of selected green teas, with a handful of others on a shelf behind. One contains Rohini’s delightful first flush Green Enigma (Rs 5,800 or $105, a kilo), a leggy, large-leaf tea. Another holds second flush Emerald Green from Arya (Rs 6,400 or $115), which gives a light-colored liquor, mellow and aromatic, with traces of grasses and fruits.
For Sarda, Rohini’s hand-rolled first flush Green Pearls was 2013’s finest. “It’s the smoothest green tea, very light and stylishly done.” He smiled and plucked a couple of rolled pearls the size of earrings from a jar. Once steeped, the liquor shines a pale gold, a shade closer to champagne than hay. In the mouth, it’s plummy in a fulsome and rounded way, with hints of vegetables and greens but no suggestion of bitterness or even the pungent notes so prevalent in other green teas.
Nathmulls sells it for Rs 8,000 ($145) per kilo. That makes it more expensive than all but a half dozen of Nathmulls’ most exclusive and celebrated black teas. Such excellence comes at a price, even so close to its source.
The Rohini Tea Estate is one of the first gardens passed on the Rohini Road heading from Siliguri into the hills. Once it was the largest estate in Darjeeling. With the lowest section just above Siliguri, at the narrow, strategic neck of land that connects Assam and the northeast states with the rest of India, it has a quartet of borders within a brief bird’s (or aircraft’s) flight—Bangladesh (roughly three miles), Nepal (thirteen miles), Bhutan (thirty-four miles), and China (fifty miles). In 1962, the year of the Sino-India conflict when China abruptly launched a two-pronged attack along the high Himalayan border it shares with India and occupied part of Assam for a month, India’s military took over Rohini’s land, closed the garden, and converted it into an army base. Nearly 80 percent of the tea bushes were torn out. According to Rishi Saria, whose family now owns Rohini, the owner fought the central government for years to get it back. Finally, in 1995, 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of it were returned, although just 33 hectares (81 acres) were still under tea. By then, the owner, Saria explained, had exhausted his resources in the fight and sold it off. Part of the estate was reopened with some new plantings. In 2000, Rohini changed hands again, with the Saria family purchasing the garden. Replanting continued. Today 145 hectares (360 acres) of tea bushes are planted on the estate, which now measures 320 hectares (790 acres).