After my month at the warehouses it was decided that I should now come to grips with the most important aspect of our business which was Tea Tasting. I could see that my time in the warehouses were necessary to have a basic understanding of tea. It was the start of honing my sensory faculties. 

I have borrowed a video from YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utwwkNkNgiM) which shows a scene at a German buyers tasting room. Let us spend a couple of minutes looking at the video now. We see a senior and a junior Tea Taster. They have a batch of tea samples in front of them. 

What we see are Orthodox Tea samples displayed on white paper boards, the Liquor is laid out in Tasting Cups, the Pots in which the tea was brewed is in front of the liquor, the inverted Lid kept over the pot has the Infusion (the term we use for spent leaf after the liquid tea is extracted). These two are probably looking at a batch of Darjeeling tea. 

The Taster examines the appearance of the Orthodox tea, wherein he checks the ‘make’ or whether the leaf is well twisted, correctly sized. Is there evenness in grading? This is an important aspect for Blenders and Retailers. 

Now you see the Taster blow over the leaf and smell it. From this Taster gets a fair idea of the quality and what to expect from the liquor, the freshness of the tea and so on. If the tea sample smells ‘dead’, it’s gathered moisture and has lost its freshness. Or it could smell smokey or burnt – deficiencies in the manufacturing process. 

Then we smell the aroma in the pot to get an idea of what to expect in the cup and turn over the Infusion on to the lid. We look at the colour of the ‘infusion’ which is on display. A bright infusion is what every Taster is looking for. A dull infusion denotes a faulty liquor which may be due to several reasons, which will be identified during the tasting process. 

A greenish infusion could mean poorly dried tea which means the oxidising process has not been fully arrested – which will affect keeping quality. As you see I have been harping on ‘keeping quality’ because I not interested in the tea being great when it is fresh and newly manufactured but it must taste just a good when it reaches your cup. 

The tasting process goes through several stages of checking but the tasting of the liquor is the most important part. The taster takes a sip, swirls the liquid around in his mouth, using his palette, the sides of his tongue, and the use of his olfactory senses before spitting it out in a spittoon. 

This is the key part that corroborates and confirms all the information the Taster has been gathering through the examination of the Leaf and Infusion. 

You might think this process would take forever. Not at all – we are expected to taste 2 cups a minute! But the tasting process requires extraordinary concentration when our sensory faculties are heightened.

What I have just described is tasting of Orthodox Tea. The process of tasting CTC is slightly different and not as intricate unless it is high quality Second Flush from Assam.

For those who want to know more about Tea Tasting there’s a ton of stuff on YouTube. 

As a Trainee I was expected to join any Taster whenever he started tasting which would be about 30 to 40 cups per batch. By the end of the day I would have tasted around 200 to 250 cups of tea! 

Of course I would have breaks in between when I would go down to my Desk, have a cup of Coffee and read the newspaper or the office mail! 

We had a system for getting everyone on the same page by sharing mail from clients along with the response of the executives looking after them. These would be circulated each day on a clipboard. This clipboard would also have things of interest like crop figures, tea export figures and such. 

The board would originate at the Chairman’s desk and make its way down the pecking order. By the time it reached a trainee’s desk it could be two or three days old, but I didn’t mind! 

We are now in the electronic age where information is passed instantaneously. But in the 60’s and 70’s the Clipboard was all that we had – something we looked forward to each day!