The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [37]
Thanks to their efforts, today we can enjoy a range of aromatic, flavorful Darjeeling teas. We will begin with a bright and floral First Flush Darjeeling. Then we’ll taste a great, though more subdued, Second Flush. We’ll end with two teas with characteristic mellow but assertive Autumnal Darjeeling flavors.
Since Darjeelings are more delicate than Assams, they are best brewed at lower temperatures, between 190 and 212 degrees Fahrenheit, and for only three to four minutes. Experiment to see what works best. In general, the later the tea is harvested in the season, the higher the water temperature should be.
SINGBULLI SFTGFOP1 SUPREME DJ 18 Singbulli Special Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe No. 1
Singbulli is one of Darjeeling’s better gardens, stretching over the foothills of the Himalayas at the base of Kangchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world. Although some distance from the city of Darjeeling, Singbulli is still part of the Darjeeling region. The road to the garden offers one of the most scenic drives in all of tea country: It loops through tea fields, following the crests of the hills before plunging into the tea-carpeted Mirik Valley. While much of Darjeeling teas suffer from an overuse of modifiers, Singbulli teas really are supreme. With its spicy, lively aromas, its bracing body, fruity flavors, and colorful green and brown leaves, the tea is a model First Flush Darjeeling.
Like Chinese Qing Ming teas and Japanese Senchas, First Flush Darjeelings consist of the first leaves and buds to flush in early spring. Spring teas are so prized because they have a bigger share of what makes tea so delicious. During the winter the plants go dormant, storing sugars and other compounds in their roots. As the weather warms, the plants send out those sugars and other tasty compounds to the tips of the plants to fuel new leaf growth. In the cool spring weather, the leaves grow slowly, making their flavor compounds even more concentrated and complex.
To help bring out these more nuanced flavors, Singbulli tea makers oxidize First Flush teas for less time than they do teas harvested later in the season. They stop the First Flush after what they call “the first nose,” a particular scent that emerges about two hours after the leaves are rolled. First Flush teas are therefore quite green, both because of their shorter oxidation and because of hard withering.
In the last ten years, competition over the earliest First Flush teas has gotten quite intense. Few people in India take any notice of them, since the national beverage there is chai from CTC teas. Nonetheless, tea drinkers in Germany and, increasingly, Japan and the United States are quite fond of them. First Flush teas are flown into Japan like Beaujolais Nouveau is; some Japanese tea shops even display signs that read, “The First Flush has arrived.” Japanese businessmen increasingly offer Darjeeling First Flush teas to colleagues as tokens of respect.
Though they may be prestigious, the very first teas of the First Flush season are usually a little thin. Unlike Qing Ming teas and Senchas, First Flush teas actually peak a few weeks into the harvest. While tea buyers compete over the very first lots of the season, it’s actually better to wait to see which lots are the best.
Singbulli’s First Flush season starts around the second week of March and lasts roughly three weeks. The Dj 18 in this tea’s name indicates that the tea was harvested about two weeks into the harvest, the eighteenth lot to be picked.
MARGARET’S HOPE FTGFOP MUSCATEL DJ 275 Margaret’s Hope Fancy Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe Muscatel Darjeeling Lot No. 275
Margaret’s Hope contains all the mellow, more subdued, cooked stone fruit character of a classic Second Flush Darjeeling. This