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! I took a picture of a Darjeeling tea from another garden and asked Rishi (the owner of Rohini) why it was all broken up and that despite the acronym SFTGFOP1 I didn’t see any buds present), his reply was: “All leaf irrespective of Quality, Size, Tip Content, Season is called FTGFOP1 or SFTGGFOP1 or something like. It is a stupid naming standard”. — Take from that what you will.
Lastly:
Darjeeling is one of the tea-producing areas of the world that often fails to live up to its hype/fame. If you’ve felt that way before, I hope you might give one of the Darjeeling tea’s on this site a chance. For what it’s worth — they’re very good to me, I wouldn’t sell them here otherwise. I believe I’ve done my due diligence to select only the absolute pinnacle of what was presented to me (and I have some deeply knowledgeable sources this year that provided me with a great spread to select from).
