Alex from bespoke tea blenders Blends for Friends provides some commentary to two video clips. The first the tea manufacture process at a tea estate and the second the breaking of a puerh cake at a Hong Kong tea shop.

” This clip doesn’t explain the processes involved, and skips through some important elements in a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ kind of way, but it does show the beauty of Darjeeling as a tea growing region and the various stages required to make a normal black tea.

Of all the more classic tea growing regions of the world, Darjeeling is very famous for a particular tasting tea. Due to the high elevation growth (see the steep incline in the clip) the leaf is manufactured in a colder environment; at the beginning of the season, or ‘first flush’, the taste tends to be more ‘greenish’ and often referred to as ‘muscatel’.

A good quality tea shop will sell the first flush separately from the second, third and autumnal Darjeelings as the quality will be significantly different as the season progresses (much like a wine grown in a seasonal climate would). One should always expect to pay more for a first flush as this is the most sought after.

From year to year, quality for a particular estate will differ and fluctuate, but for the past few years a couple of personal and consistent favourites of mine have been from the tea estates of Margaret’s Hope and Soom.”

Matcha Tea