INDIA REPORT 2011

This year my Asia trip was split into three distinct parts.  Aside from my usual Darjeeling tour I returned Sri Lanka again and also headed a very exciting exchange project in Nepal. Jonathan who manages our teahouse in Montreal accompanied me. First news from the tea community in Kolkata on arrival was of an excellent start up in the mountains.  After the last four years of no sun and then drought the weather had been ideal for both quantity and quality. Early samples had been smuggled out of the gardens which were in full manufacture but locked-up by a region-wide union strike. The strike was cleared up within a few days and the workers of Darjeeling received a 34% pay increase!

Our Japanese guests arrived in Kolkata for the Himalaya Japan Exchange Project I had been developing over the previous year. Mr.Iwata a 17th generation tea farmer with a tiny tea garden near Kobe in Japan, was here to improve his understanding of black tea and to share his expertise in green tea. Mr.Takeda a semi-retired tea-scientist and president of one of Japan’s most respected research institutes who has spent his life developing plants for the Japanese tea industry for the scientific aspect.  We all headed for Darjeeling to pick up our Indian expert the highly respected tea consultant Mr.JP Gurung. We then traveled on to Nepal where we spent a week exchanging knowledge on the manufacture and cultivation of black and green tea.

Once the project was finished we left our Japanese friends and began a series of Darjeeling garden visits buying the exceptional selection of First Flush Darjeelings that you can see in our catalogue for 2011. Finally the philosophical patience of the Indian tea industry was rewarded with a bumper season that they direly needed to keep the industry alive. From Darjeeling we flew to Colombo in Sri Lanka to continue tasting and buying of Ceylon teas for the catalogue and traveled through various growing regions for research. A few final days in Kolkata to finalize the buying and transport arrangements and we were heading home after a whirlwind month of exciting discoveries, a new level of understanding and a lot of really great tea.