Notes from a tea estate
2 years, 9 months ago

Notes from a tea estate

The Hindu  

I am beyond intrigued by the russet-hued liquid that’s playfully twinkling in the light of the midday winter sun, as I give a vigorous swirl to the goblet that contains it. I open my eyes and I am still very much at the lush Attabarrie Tea Estate in the village of Demow in Upper Assam, along the southern banks of the mighty Brahmaputra river. Pleased to have tried his long-in-the-brewing experiment on a food writer, no less, Shantanu Roy, the estate’s manager lets me in on his tea wine recipe that he says is produced from just the prized, needle-like bud of the tea plant, sugar, yeast and distilled water. Underdog’s day Producing roughly 55% of India’s tea, Assam, I learn, is home to around 850 big tea estates — just like Attabarrie where I am, that were set up during colonial times — along with lakhs of small tea growers or STGs as they are known locally. For the organised sector once again seems buoyed by the record-breaking sale of a kilo of Assam’s specialty orthodox tea from the Manohari Tea Estate in nearby Dibrugarh for an astronomical ₹99,999 at the famous Guwahati Tea Auction Centre a few weeks ago.

Tea Estate  big  writer  wine  told  notes  estates  im  estate  food  tea  stgs

History of this topic

Travel for tea
1 year, 6 months ago

Travel for tea

Live Mint  

For the last few years, conversations with my friend Elizeth, a Brazilian tea importer, have been entirely about India and her great desire to visit it. “The rose-tinted view of colonialism needs to be revisited, not rejected,” says Rudra Chatterjee of Luxmi Estates, which includes the Makaibari Tea Estate in Darjeeling. In Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, Wah Tea Estate’s fourth-generation planter, …

Assam’s new age tea producers
1 year, 7 months ago

Assam’s new age tea producers

Live Mint  

A friend told me that a cup of tea is the reason she gets out of bed every morning. But there’s more brewing in Assam that is well worth celebrating—for Assam tea is into its 200th year. I tried a first flush tippy black tea from Rajen Baruah’s Assam Heritage Tea in Dibrugarh. Speaking of ease of brewing, in Sibsagar, …

Trouble in the brew? Darjeeling tea faces existential threats
2 years ago

Trouble in the brew? Darjeeling tea faces existential threats

The Hindu  

Published : Dec 01, 2022 10:35 IST On September 29, as West Bengal was gearing up for Durga Puja, Ajoy Edwards, the charismatic president of the Hamro Party, walked into a tea garden near Darjeeling whose workers were protesting against the payment of puja bonus in instalments. A Parliamentary Standing Committee report in June this year, titled “Issues Affecting the …

Storm in a tea cup
2 years ago

Storm in a tea cup

The Hindu  

Ganesh, a 53-year-old estate worker at the government-run Tamil Nadu Tea Plantation Corporation estate in Cherangode, in The Nilgiris district, is a worried man. Managing Director of TANTEA, and Conservator of Forests, D. Venkatesh, said that TANTEA had been recording losses over the last 10 years, and that the government had only returned “unproductive” estate areas, where there was no …

Get to know the indigenous teas of Assam
2 years, 2 months ago

Get to know the indigenous teas of Assam

Live Mint  

There’s a small but growing tribe of tea farmers who have been experimenting with tea-making. Earlier, these farmers would have sold the tea leaves to a factory; now they are innovating, learning new styles from Taiwanese tea makers and even reaching into the past to draw from tradition. This week, I tried three indigenous teas from Assam: the khilang, dheki …

Half of Darjeeling tea estates up for sale amid financial crisis, here's why
2 years, 3 months ago

Half of Darjeeling tea estates up for sale amid financial crisis, here's why

Firstpost  

The planters, both big and small, are mulling over selling it off for a good price. The small planters, who own single estates, are more keen to sell their gardens, while the big groups are resistant to the idea, according to the planters in the area More than half of the tea estates in the Darjeeling hills are up for …

Assam small tea growers resent hike in workers’ wages
2 years, 4 months ago

Assam small tea growers resent hike in workers’ wages

The Hindu  

Small tea growers in Assam have resented the State government’s “unilateral” decision to increase the daily wage of plantation workers across gardens big and small to ₹232. The All Assam Small Tea Growers’ Association said equating them with large gardens was an injustice on the part of the government. Government not extending subsidies: team growers’ body Assam has about 1.22 …

Go on a tea trail in Munnar
2 years, 4 months ago

Go on a tea trail in Munnar

Live Mint  

There are three things about Munnar that I love. There are two tea museums, one the Tea Museum on Nullatanni Road run by Kanan Devan Hills Plantations Co. Ltd and the other, the Lockhart Tea Museum, run by Harrisons Malayalam Ltd. Turner asked John Ajoo, a Chinese tea maker who had arrived in India with Robert Fortune, a Scottish botanist …

Taste the life of a tea planter
2 years, 7 months ago

Taste the life of a tea planter

Live Mint  

Bengaluru has been unusually warm. I spent a weekend last month at a nearly 100-year-old Sinna Dorai bungalow at the Kadamane tea estate in Sakleshpur, Karnataka. For instance, the Makaibari home-stay programme in Darjeeling, initiated by the garden’s former owner, Rajah Banerjee, to offer tea workers a chance to earn extra income. If you like slow travel, Ujjawal Chettri’s home-stay, …

Decoding the price of tea
3 years, 8 months ago

Decoding the price of tea

Live Mint  

Why is some tea so cheap while others cost the earth? Over the past few years, some of the teas that have fetched record prices are the Manohari Gold, a black tippy tea from Assam that sold for ₹75,000 a kilogram at the auctions in 2020. In 2019, two teas sold for that magic number of ₹75,000—the Golden Butterfly tea …

Decoding the price of tea
3 years, 8 months ago

Decoding the price of tea

Live Mint  

Why is some tea so cheap while others cost the earth? Over the past few years, some of the teas that have fetched record prices are the Manohari Gold, a black tippy tea from Assam that sold for ₹75,000 a kilogram at the auctions in 2020. In 2019, two teas sold for that magic number of ₹75,000—the Golden Butterfly tea …

Indian tea prices jump to new record as floods in Assam, coronavirus outbreak slash output
4 years, 5 months ago

Indian tea prices jump to new record as floods in Assam, coronavirus outbreak slash output

Firstpost  

Production losses have already pushed weekly auction prices to a record of Rs 232.60 per kilogramme, up 57 percent from a year ago, according to the Tea Board Mumbai: Tea prices in the world’s second-biggest producer India have jumped to a record after intense floods and coronavirus movement restrictions trimmed output in the main producing region. The price rise could …

Discover Related