As a tea enthusiast I never resist the offer of samples that pile up my desk everyday. Since the climate has not favored the early spring crop this year, we generally presume that we will not see the quality we often get in a more amiable environment. But we are wrong, most of the time. Nature has to deliver what it promises and answer the hopes of all Darjeeling enthusiasts, like me.

It is weird, but when I stumble upon an exotic Darjeeling tea that really defines the season n the character, it excites me a lot. Having tasted many of this season’s first flush teas, I have found “an exotic” only today. So I had to write about it.

This tea comes from a tiny plantation called ARYA Tea Estate just below the Darjeeling town. Arya is a small Organic tea garden that makes very little tea as compared to other plantations in Darjeeling. Let me describe the leaves as it lays in front of me:

Make: Orthodox -neat, fresh with a green finish. Finely crafted almost “wiry” in darjeeling terms. For an exotic, the word greenish implies to resemblance with fresh new spring shoots that you see in the fields. Abundance of fine silver buds is also a sign of a fine first flush (Spring pekoe).

Feel : The feel of the dry leaves to touch….is dry yet silky.

Smell: The smell of the dry leaves is like that of toasted honey.

I intend to prepare this tea in a typical darjeeling tasting style. Two and a half grams of tea in the usual tasting apparatus that consist of a cup with a lid and a bowl, and steeped for five minutes.

I could not wait. As I dipped my nose in the lid, the fragrance that emitted out of the small hole in the lid was amazingly “lively”. As soon as my sand watch became empty on the top side. I poured the liquor to my tasting bowl. The color was bright golden with a pale lemon hue.

I turned over the infused leaf. It still acquired the lush green color. The aroma was coming in waves….vegetal almost pine like….toasted honey…..very floral.

I drained the liquor to my glass cup and slurped it….the tangy lively bite of fresh Darjeeling first flush, eminent. I rolled it in my mouth for while…the different layers of flavor started to emote in my olfactory glands…. prominent toasted honey after notes and a lingering floral sweetness as I gulped it down.

An exotica i really cherised! Thanks to Arya Tea Estates and Mr.Sanyal for sending me the samples. I don’t know how many layers of flavor profile this tea will develop as it matures…….we will wait and see and I will definitely post a new one If it does…….

Long Live Darjeeling…Shangrila of Teas….

The lip smacking fresh Spring Teas is being harvested!

Plantations are lushing with fresh new shoots and the colourful dressed pickers are busy picking the fresh new batches of spring leaf which carry on till the end of april.

The air among the pickers, planters and tea makers is filled with excitement to roll out the best makes of darjeeling tea in the market.

Generally, Darjeeling recieves a generous shower of rain in december consequently followed by some in January and febraury. But this year, the rain has failed and stemmed the growth of the new spring leaves.

The harvest is late, but the reselient 130 years old tea bushes still yeilds the most awaited Spring Tea of the season 2009.