High Tea, India Style
In October 2007 the New York Times ran a feature story about Darjeeling in the Travel Section, titled, High Tea, India Style.
The author, Matt Gross, toured the region during the first flush season
in March and reports back on the legends, accomodations, estates, meals
and of course tea. On visiting the renowned Makaibari
estate Mr. Gross writes:
I HAD my first such encounter — the latter sort — at Makaibari,
an estate just south of the town of Kurseong, around 4,500 feet above
sea level. Founded by G. C. Banerjee in the 1840s, during the region's
first great wave of tea cultivation, Makaibari remains a family
operation, run by Banerjee's great-grandson Swaraj — better known as
Rajah.
Rajah is a Darjeeling legend: He's arguably done more for
Darjeeling tea than anyone else in the district. Back in 1988, he took
the estate organic; four years later, it was fully biodynamic, the
first in the world.
Today, it produces the most expensive brew
in Darjeeling, a “muscatel” that sold for 50,000 rupees a kilogram
(about $555 a pound, at recent exchange rates of around 41 rupees to
the dollar) at auction in Beijing
last year. You won't often spot his logo — a five-petaled flower that
resembles the underside of a tea blossom — on grocery store shelves,
but you'll find his leaves in boxes marked Tazo and Whole Foods.
After
checking into one of the six no-frills bungalows he has erected for
tourists, I marched into the Makaibari factory (opened in 1859),
climbed the wooden steps to Mr. Banerjee's office and sat down across
the desk from a vigorous patrician with thick gray hair, a clean-shaven
angular jaw and black eyebrows in permanent ironic arch. What, he
asked, smoking a borrowed cigarette, did I hope to accomplish at
Makaibari?
“Well,” I began, as the smell of brewing leaves wafted
in from the adjacent tasting room, “I guess I'd like to see how tea is
made.”
“Ha! You've come to the wrong place for that,” Mr.
Banerjee declared with an eager grin. “This is the place to see how tea
is enjoyed!”
Then he poured me a cup — bright but mellow, with a
faint fruity sweetness that lingered on my tongue. It was to be the
first of many perfect cups.
Enjoying tea at Makaibari was an
involved business, one that began before I'd even woken up. At 7:30
every morning, a knock would come at the door of my bungalow, and Mr.
Lama, the grandfatherly caretaker, would present me with a cup of
fresh, hot “bed tea,” which I'd sip groggily before leaving my woolen
blankets for the chilly mountain air.
At breakfast in the
glassed-in common room, more tea, after which I'd march down to the
factory. On one side of the road were the dragon's green flanks. On the
other, the red, white, yellow and blue prayer flags of a tin-roofed
Buddhist monastery fluttered in the Himalayan breeze. Uniformed
children on their way to school would shout “Hello!” while their
parents, many of them Makaibari employees, would put their palms
together and quietly say, “Namaste.”
In Makaibari's wood-paneled
offices, I'd have a cup while waiting for Mr. Banerjee to arrive — it
was with him, not some hospitality manager, that I would plan my days.
Sometimes he'd show up early, other days late, but the office was
filled with memorabilia with which to pass the time: portraits of Mr.
Banerjee's father, grandfather and great-grandfather; certificates
announcing new record prices; a chart of tea-tasting vocabulary; and a
small tea plant that concealed two “tea devas,” curious insects whose
bodies mimic the shape and color of a tea leaf.
After making his entrance — sometimes on his black gelding, Storm,
but always wearing a high-waisted safari suit he designed himself — Mr.
Banerjee would expound on everything from Rudolf Steiner's biodynamic
farming theories to the fall of Atlantis to his youth on Carnaby Street
in London, where he made a fortune before retreating to Darjeeling to
grow tea.
Eventually, we'd move into the
tasting room, where Mr. Banerjee would inspect the day's production. No
tea bags here — this was “SFTGFOP,” the labels noted: super-fine tippy
golden flowery orange pekoe, the healthy, unbroken leaves from the very
top of the bush. Earlier, an assistant had weighed out precisely two
grams from several batches, steeped them in nearly boiling water for
five minutes, and strained the tea into white ceramic bowls. As
with wine, tasting tea is no simple process of gulping and grading. Mr.
Banerjee first inspected the infused leaves for color and nose, and
only then sipped from each bowl, inhaling sharply to oxidate the liquid
and release its flavors, and sloshing it loudly around his mouth before
spitting it into a nearby tub. Then, with hardly a moment's hesitation,
he'd move on to the next bowl, and the next, and the next.
Then it was my turn.
“Taste those two,” Mr. Banerjee ordered the first day, “and tell me which you prefer.”
I
did as he said. Both had the gentle floral aroma typical of first-flush
Darjeelings, but the second had a pronounced strength and astringency
that appealed to me, even though I knew that Darjeeling growers try for
subtlety over punch. I told him my decision.
“Bah!” he said after
resampling them. “That one only has undertones of peach. The first one
has peach flavors and is much more complex. It's far superior!”
Read the rest of the article here.
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