Here are some notes on tea-related shopping in Calcutta.

The Lakshmi Narayan Tea House is a small shop featuring Darjeeling
teas. How small? The customer area allows three or four people to
stand elbow to elbow, backs to the street, at a counter behind which
the clerks dart among the tea chests. The way the tea is stored
doesn't exactly promise the ultimate in freshness: each tea chest has
a round hole punched in it near the bottom, more or less the way you'd
tap a beer keg, said hole stoppered by a wadded-up piece of cardboard.
If you order a certain tea, the clerk removes the cardboard and lets
the leaves flow into a bag, jamming the cardboard back in at the
appropriate moment.

I was glad my Bengali-speaking sister-in-law was with me, but I
probably could have limped along with the aid of their printed catalogue.

The only 2005 first flush they said they had (this was March 6) was a
Thurbo at a shockingly low 400 Rupees ($9.30) a kilogram. I managed
to control the spasm of greed this price aroused in me. Somehow it
seemed more conservative, responsible, smart, or *something* to take
250g of Nagri 2004 autumn flush at Rs 200/kg. (I'd never knowingly
drunk autumn flush before, and they said this was their best autumn
tea, and it was probably genuine, so why not?)

The next day, at the Changoiwala office in Calcutta, I mentioned the
Thurbo to Samir, SMC's son who is a partner in the business. He
smiled and said it was impossible for that shop to have 2005 tea.

***

I really don't know how typical this is of Indian - or even Calcutta -
food markets, but I can report on the grocery store nearest my inlaws,
one of a chain called Arambagh's. Along with a few CTC teas whose
packages promise strength above all else, there are several types of
tea billed as Darjeeling: Lipton Green Label, Brooke Bond, (and now
we're getting into fancier packaging) Castleton, and four different
varieties of Makaibari. Not one of the Darjeelings mentions a year or
a season. I wonder if it's too cynical to assume that, to the extent
that these teas really are Darjeeling, they're lowly monsoon tea.

***

The last day before we had to return to the US, we were running random
errands in the center of the city. In the Oxford Book Store, on
swanky Park St., I was roaming distractedly when I noticed they had a
section devoted to tea. They actually had two quite technical books
on tea botany, production, etc., for prices that would fetch cheaply
made paperbacks in the US. I browsed these books and decided that,
despite their India-is-the-center-of-the-tea-universe attitude, they
were worth having and I probably wouldn't find them at home, so I did
buy them.

Later I was able to ask SMC if he was familiar with these books. He
was indeed. Any good? Yes, he said, but it's important to remember
that tea growers don't tell their secret techniques to professors.

***

And that's it for this series.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html
BRO wisdom: THIS IS HIGHWAY NOT RUNWAY