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First published in Great Britain 2015
© Jeff Koehler, 2015
Jeff Koehler has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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ISBN: HB: 978-1-4088-4607-0
ePub: 978-1-4088-4606-3
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To Tod Nelson, for years of friendship and reading early drafts
Contents
Two Leaves and a Bud
First Flush
1. Into the Hills
2. Journey from the East
3. The Company
4. An Indian Tea Industry
5. China Leaf
Second Flush
6. Darjeeling
7. Terroir to Teacup
8. A Decision for the Mouth to Make
9. Knocking Down
Monsoon Flush
10. The Raj in the Hills Above
11. Nostalgia
12. Planters and Pluckers
13. Midnight’s Planters
14. Crises
Autumn Flush
15. Positive Winds
16. Soil
17. Celestial Influences
18. Initiatives
19. Back down the Hill
Recipes
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
A Note on the Author
By the Same Author
Index
Plate Section
Two Leaves and a Bud
The rows of ceiling fans struggled to cool the raked Kolkata auction room. Their collective whir barely covered the cawing of large crows on the trees outside or the incessant honking horns from black-and-canary-yellow Ambassador taxis moving through the perpetually slow traffic. Nearly two inches of rain had fallen on Friday, and after a relatively dry weekend, drenching monsoon showers returned on Monday, July 14, 2003. It was approaching ninety degrees Fahrenheit, and the humidity stood at over 90 percent. Parts of the city remained submerged knee-deep in water. Dark, spongy clouds hung overhead. Only the lightest of breezes moved in the thick air.
Tea buyers, agents, exporters, blenders, and “packeteers” had gathered for Sale No. 28 of Darjeeling tea1 on the second floor of Nilhat House, a boxy and bright midcentury midrise shoehorned into the old city center. The building houses J. Thomas & Co., India’s oldest and largest firm of tea brokers and auctioneers.
Darjeeling is known for its single-estate teas, unblended and unflavored. With characteristic brightness frequently likened to newly minted coins, fragrant aromas, and sophisticated, complex flavors—delicate, even flowery (more stem than petal, as one expert blender put it), with hints of apricots and peaches, muscat grapes, and toasty nuts—it’s the world’s premium tea, the “champagne of tea.”
That day at the weekly event, the auctioneer Kavi Seth thought they might see unusually high prices with the exceptional quality of some of the tea on offer—specifically a lot from Makaibari, one of Darjeeling’s oldest gardens. Since the early 1980s, Makaibari had been under control of Rajah Banerjee, the charismatic, fourth-generation owner, who converted it into an organic oasis with more than half the estate under deep forest cover. He sought exceptional leaf quality through healthy soil and viewed the farm as a complete, self-contained organism. Some buyers considered it to be the finest, purest Darjeeling tea available—with a cosmic edge. Banerjee farms observed wider lunar patterns and planetary rhythms, and the lot in question up for auction that day, christened Silver Tips Imperial, had been picked under a full moon. “If Darjeeling is the champagne of teas,” Time magazine proclaimed in 2008, “Makaibari is the Krug or Henri Giraud.”2
Seth started with J. Thomas in 1985, had been intimately involved with Darjeeling tea for a decade, and had been in charge of the catalog and auction of Darjeeling teas for the previous two years. While he had tasted tens of thousands of Darjeeling teas, Seth recognized something extraordinary in the Makaibari lot. A decade later he still vividly recalls its “special flavor and quality.” Seth did two things to build excitement. First, he spread the word among buyers. Second, quite extraordinarily, he listed it last in the catalog. Normally the standout teas are toward the beginning and then mixed around. But this would be the day’s final lot and force buyers to stick around until the very end.
In the crowded auction room, Seth worked through hundreds of lots of teas, coming, at last, in late afternoon, to the anticipated Makaibari offering.
That midsummer, Darjeeling tea was fetching on average 150.25 rupees per kilo, then worth about $3.25, at the weekly auction, with leaf grades—the highest level—averaging Rs 295.3 (By contrast, the year’s all-India average for 2003 was Rs 77.25.)*
Yet Seth opened the bidding at Rs 3,000.
Buyers, perhaps drained from the anticipation and tension, the warm room, and humidity outside, and keenly aware of the significant amount of money they were committing to laying out, slowly countered one another with slightly higher offers under the auctioneer’s nudging.
Then a new buyer jumped into the bidding. Representing a European firm, he was keen to secure the lot of five small chests of tea. A current surged through the room, and bidding rallied.
Sitting at a dais in the front of the room, the auctioneer took offers and counteroffers as the amount spiraled aggressively upward by the hundreds of rupees, speeding past Rs 8,000, Rs 10,000, and Rs 12,000. Soon it approached—and quickly shot by—the standing world record of Rs 13,001 for tea sold at wholesale auction that had been set in 1992 by a tea from another Darjeeling estate, Castleton, which abuts Makaibari. A murmur charged through the audience—and then a hush. Everyone was aware of being part of something special. Seth thought he would see a good price that afternoon for the lot, but he hadn’t imagined it would go this high.