Melinda wrote:
> I see that Upton's is advertising that it has some early season First Flush
> Darjeelings for 2006...isn't it way early for that ?

Definetely so. As Lew said, most likely the lower gardens around Mirik
like Gopaldhara, Thurbo, ... will be the first to serve the "real" FF ,
probably around the last week of February, depending on the weather.

These days I'll be visiting some of those lower gardens with local
friends of mine, I agreed on doing some environmental engineering down
there, but it's to early to talk about the details. Until last week I
was also working on a tea related webpage, but alas, my laptop fell
into a bag of tsampa (of all things, finely ground tibetan barley
flour, LOL) and hasn't recovered yet. Let me see if I can fix it and
continue with that page.

Dean, keep us updated on those "winter" leaves from Uptons.
I'll try my best to keep you updated with news from the hills,
especially on the FFs I'll try to snatch fresh from the gardens with a
little help from my friends.

Karsten / Darjeeling