Tea bushes in Darjeeling rest through the winter. When the days lengthen in March, the first new shoots appear: two leaves and a bud, pale green and soft enough to fold between your fingers. That is the first flush, and it is the tea this hillside is known for.
Two leaves and a bud
Our pluckers work the sections from about seven in the morning, moving along the contour paths with baskets on their backs. They take only the top two leaves and the bud, by hand, because a machine cannot tell the tender shoot from the coarse leaf beneath it. A good plucker fills a basket by noon; the leaf is weighed at the section shed and carried up to the factory the same morning.
From the basket to the cup
In the factory the leaf is spread on withering troughs, rolled, left to oxidise for a short while and then dried. For a first flush the oxidation is light, which is why the liquor is pale gold and the taste is bright and floral rather than dark and malty. By evening the day's pluck is tea.
Guests staying with us between March and May can walk the sections with the pluckers at first light and follow the leaf through the factory. Ask at breakfast the night before and we will wake you with bed tea at six.