The Harney & Sons Guide to Tea - Michael Harney [41]
The numbering system for this tea uses the letters OR, meaning Orthodox, followed by the lot number 815. Such a high number indicates that it was harvested during the Second Flush period.
The Second Flush period is arguably the best time for Assams. Assam producers tried to imitate Darjeeling First Flushes, but they were not successful with a lighter version of the region’s tea. People just love the taste of this strong, sophisticated tea.
MANGALAM FTGBOP SPECIAL OR 555 Mangalam Fancy Tippy Golden Broken Orange Pekoe Special Orthodox 555
This tea comes from the same garden and harvest as the preceding tea. Tasting the two next to each other helps illustrate how much leaf size helps determine a tea’s characteristics: Briefly put, the smaller the leaf, the simpler and more assertive the flavors and aromas, and the darker the liquor. This tea is a Broken Orange Pekoe, while the previous one is graded Flowery. This one has the smaller leaves.
When the tea leaves are rolled, the rolling machine crushes at different rates, creating some longer leaves and some shorter. The previous tea is an example of the “fines,” the first leaves to drop out of the machine. By contrast, this tea was put through a dhool and rolled again.
Both are excellent Assams, both have the lovely Mangalam flavors of malt and dark honey. This GBOP Special resembles its GFOP cousin, but this one emphasizes strength while the other shows off its sophistication. I drink a tea like this most mornings. I love its mixture of strength and dark honey flavors.
BOISAHABI CTC PF 642 Boisahabi CTC Pekoe Fannings Lot No. 642
While 95 percent of the teas on the market in India and Great Britain are CTC teas, this is the only one I’m including in the book. Obviously CTC teas are enjoyed by millions of people, but I feel the world of tea offers so much more. The aromas of CTC teas are simple and strong, with only a ghost of fruit flavors. The liquor is much darker, with much more body.
Though quite robust, this Boisahabi CTC is also palatable. When you taste this CTC, notice how uniform its flavors are in the mouth. Unlike Orthodox teas, CTC teas do not evolve and alter as you taste but remain consistent. The flavor is comfortingly stable but also somewhat predictable.
Boisahibi CTC comes from a particularly handsome garden in Assam that still has traces of British influence in its architecture. The flat fields are filled with thousands of tea plants, with tall shade trees rising high above them.
CEYLON BLACK TEAS
1. New Vithanakande FBOP EX SP
2. Kenilworth BOP1
3. Uva Highlands Pekoe
To the south and east of the Indian subcontinent lies the small, pear-shaped country of Sri Lanka. The tropical island is smaller than the state of Indiana yet produces a quantity and variety of black teas to rival China. Its unique topography and climate allow for three types of tea, determined not by season but by altitude: low-grown, medium-grown, and high-grown, each with its own unusual flavor profile.
Today, these teas are called Ceylons for marketing purposes; the island has not held the name of Ceylon since it was a British colony. Though the nation won independence in 1948, for the sake of recognizability, Sri Lankan tea makers have kept the name Ceylon for their teas.
The British brought the first tea plants to Sri Lanka at the end of the 1830s, shortly after establishing plantations in Assam and only a little while after seizing control of the island in 1815. Tea did not become one of the island’s dominant crops until the 1870s, when blight wiped out the country’s coffee plantations. Tea plants proved resistant to