Overview:
Perched atop a rocky cliff and gazing into the vast expanse of forests, waterfalls, lakes and rainbows. Can you imagine the aroma in the air? This is Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. If there was a group of toucans flying in the sky, it would perfectly encapsulate the fragrance of Rohini Tea Garden’s Moonlight Ruby EX-24 FF UP1 FTGFOP1. The full name is an absolute chore, but everything in it is important, so nothing was spared.
Flavor Description and Comparisons with Past Experiences:
I have had some teas in the past in which the aroma was ‘multiple colors’ – not many though. Let me elaborate on that: Teas very often smell like other things, peaches, tree bark, flower blossoms, etc. — but sometimes they don’t. Sometimes an aroma associated to tea only exists as an abstract concept: It smells cold, it smells energetic, — it smells ‘satisfying’. Some teas smell like how I imagine the color green smells; others yellow, others pink, red, orange, etc.
Teas that give a sense of ‘rainbow’ (full color spectrum) only seem to come from Darjeeling, India and Hsinchu, Taiwan and they are absolutely uncommon, I’d even say rare. Where am I going with this… It’s like the ‘rainbow aspect’ is a lens which the other aromas of the tea are perceived, and that a direct fragrance like ‘cardamom’ can be enjoyed from multiple angles as it’s filtered through pink, yellow, red, ‘aroma colors’, giving each ‘re-visit’ little twists. Maybe I can’t explain this well…
Taiwanese beauty oolongs have a distinct fragrance due to their production methods, and on top of those distinct aroma notes, they can be perceived ‘in different colors’, kind of like .. I don’t know, a lenticular picture? A holographic foil picture? (like old Marvel cards). The greatest thing about them is that because of their chameleon-like nature, these teas always seem to show a different side to you. It makes drinking them so rewarding because day to day you’ll pick up on different things.
Mentioning Oriental Beauty, I’ve found another aspect of the tea is similar too – that is a bright, dusty flavor that I believe comes from the trichomes (the hairs that cover the buds in the tea) as I often experience this aroma note in white teas. Dusty doesn’t sound appealing, but to me ‘dusty bright’ evokes a sense of drinking the sun rays, observing the golden yellow beams of light which only really become observable in dusty places, it’s definitely a favorable attribute to me. I guess my point to this is that I’ve loved Taiwanese teas for years now but never made the connection to Darjeeling before now because I have been drinking the wrong Darjeeling’s. Live and learn.
Darjeeling, India has something unique about it too. There is a characteristic fragrance and delicateness to the first flush teas that other parts of the world seem unable to capture. It could be because of the cultivars growing there, the elevation, or processing, but it’s likely all in tandem. If I consider what both places have in common, it’s that the tea is grown in high altitudes and generally include the buds. Rohini’s tea gardens begin around 304m (1000ft) above sea level, and extends upwards to 4500ft (1371m) but the Moonlight Ruby is picked at approximately 914m (3000ft). For a sense of place, Rohini is adjacent to Makaibari, slightly South East of Castleton, and South of Giddapahar and is found in Kurseong South valley.
Commonly Disclosed Classifications of Darjeeling Tea, and Perhaps something new:
Is Darjeeling a black tea? Eh… I want to say that if we as tea drinkers unified and hammered out some rules about what is what, we wouldn’t be calling Darjeeling black tea most of the time. Sometimes it’s green, sometimes it’s black, most of the times it’s oolong not called oolong, other times it’s oolong and called oolong. It’s a bit of a mess. Better to take a step back and say ‘Darjeeling is Darjeeling’.
When talking about Indian teas of any type, there is the acronym SFTGFOP1 that can be applied to them. This designates the leaf picking grade – the source material used. The fuller the acronym the younger the picking and the more buds you should expect to see. If you get a bag of broken tea, it doesn’t mean that it was broken when it was picked – it could have been damaged during shipping and handling, and you as a consumer generally don’t know how many hands a tea went through before arriving at the tea shop you bought it from. The number 1 (or lack thereof) at the end of the acronym denotes quality – it’s good to see it!
Perhaps the most basic of Darjeeling information is that First Flush (FF) refers to spring picking, second flush (SF) to summer (around May), Autumnal, and winter flushes also exist. Plantations are major employers for the area and in a place like Gopaldhara they are employed to do various tasks related to the business year-round.
When it comes to naming Darjeeling, perhaps this can be confusing because similar names are often seen, and this consistency gives a sense of structure, but this is not the case. Moonlight, Ruby, Emerald, Diamond, Gold, Silver, etc.
Where my knowledge level sits right now, I cannot speak for all producers, but as Rishi had said to me, at least for him: Emerald refers to green teas, Moonlight to mildly oxidized greens and oolongs, Ruby to the ‘top class’ of tea, while things like Diamond, Gold, and Silver refer to consecutively lower grades.
The invoice number means a lot more than you might think. I had a EX1 (very first batch of the years tea of that type) and the DJ2 (which is the 2nd batch when the tea is considered ‘typical’) and there was about a 30% decrease in quality across the board. Seeing an invoice number so low (like DJ2) also doesn’t mean that a tea will go beyond that. I suppose sometimes tea exists solely as the EX invoices and once it goes into the DJ series its only carried out a few times as the quality drops. Seeing a DJ invoice with a low number is a little misleading in this case. As a consumer you couldn’t know how many EX teas were made or when the DJ series starts and ends without talking to someone who has that information, and the further you get away from that source the harder it is to learn this.
It’s not to say that DJ1 is always better than DJ10, or DJ20… or that EX is always better than DJ because there is more information that is not conveyed at all. The lot (area) and its pruning cycle. This EX-24 is much better than the EX-17, and that is due to the pruning cycle.
There is information that I have learned from Rishi that no book (that I’ve read) or colleague in the industry (that I’ve heard) has ever touched on. The pruning cycle factor. Darjeeling plantations follow a pruning schedule of their plantations to maintain a good bush height for ease of picking. The bushes are pruned twice in 5 year cycles and are generally pruned in the winter (December or January). Whether or not the tea is pruned in January, the pruning date will be listed as the year that December fell in. It can be thought that pruning cycle affects the quality of the tea.
The Darjeeling Pruning Cycle
Year 1: Light Pruning (LP)
Year 2: Un-Pruned (UP1)
Year 3: Un-Pruned (UP2)
Year 4: Deep Skiffing
Year 5: Un-pruned (UP1D)
It’s considered that UP1 will be the best. Though pruning is not the end-all be-all of how the tea gets its flavor, it is an aspect. In the production of tea, all else being equal, the pruning could be considered the determining factor in what is considered 1st and 2nd rate.
Rishi was quick to dismiss this notion, saying that we don’t live in the perfect world where there are no other factors. So caring too much about the pruning is the wrong way to look at it. Being that I tried a UP1 vs UP2 of the same cultivar and processing picked 2 days apart and see a tremendous difference. I am hesitant to dismiss it so lightly. In any case, I was rather shocked to learn this information, and here I present it to you for your consideration. The Moonlight Ruby Tea that I’m bringing in is the UP1.
Brief Company History and the benefits of working directly with the owner:
Rohini and Gopaldhara are owned and managed by Rishi Saria. His family took over the properties of Rohini and Gopaldhara in 1955 and in the year 2000 when he was 30 years old, Rishi began their management. I met him through a Facebook group in 2020. Gopaldhara’s gardens begin at 3300ft (1005m) and rise to 7000ft (2133m) – some of the highest gardens in all of Darjeeling. I reached out at the beginning of the 2021 season for some samples of his teas, he was kind enough to send me 15 of them, and since then he has been nothing but a pleasure to answer my many questions.
The other tea that’s coming:
I didn’t mention Taiwanese Beauty Oolongs for no reason. There is a 2nd Darjeeling tea coming. It’s a hand rolled spring oolong from Rohini, around the same elevation as the Moonlight Ruby. Flavor-wise it’s like a hybrid of Fujianese Bai Mu Dan and Taiwanese Oriental Beauty. I’ve had nothing quite like it before, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected to find that flavor in India. The flavor is not obtained through the insect damage method, it’s a wonder how it happens. It’s made in tiny quantities, so I’ll only have a chance to sell 500g this year.
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