Nilhat House: Tasting the cup that cheers

Kolkata: Akhil Narayan Sapru rolled the tea leaves in his hand, muttered “black, even”, then glanced at the porcelain cup bearing the tea and called out “bright”, before sipping from it, swishing the rich golden coloured infusion in his mouth and spitting it out to pronounce “brisk, strong.” Sapru, vice chairman of J Thomas & Co Pvt Ltd, the world’s largest and oldest tea auctioneer, along with his fellow tea tasters sip up to 2,000 cups a day from assembly rows of the brew in a long tea-tasting hall, to determine the quality, price and the markets they could sell in.

A tradition and a necessity followed by his tribe ever since the first tea auction here at Kolkata’s Nilhat House on 11, R N Mukherjee Road, exactly 161 years ago on December 27, 1861.

“In a nutshell, you have to look at how the (tea) leaf looks, how the infusion looks, and then how it tastes … how brisk the cup is, how much flavour there is to the cup, how is the 'body' in it,” said Sapru as he explained in layman’s terms the mysteries of tea tasting by a rare breed of men and women in formal ties and blue workshop aprons.

Nilhat, the world’s oldest and largest surviving tea auction centre (the older London tea auction shut shop 24 years ago), is located a short walk from Kolkata’s bustling central business district of Dalhousie and was named after the indigo (Nil) that was sold at this mart (hat) before tea took over.

Most of the 1,000-odd North Indian tea gardens, located largely in Bengal and Assam, participate in the auctions here, with broking firms acting as the “bridge between buyer and seller.” J Thomas & Co accounts for the largest chunk of around 40 per cent of the roughly 550 million kgs of tea auctioned in the country at various auction centres.

“Tea quality fluctuates because of a variety of factors, and therefore each sample needs to be tasted and its quality assessed,” said Arijit Dasgupta, Director at J Thomas & Co.

Tasters have to keep their palates clean, but “it’s a myth that they are not allowed to drink,” said Sapru.

Tea tasters over the years have developed their own language: 'Bakey' means an unpleasant taste because the tea was dried at too high a temperature; 'Brisk' means a live taste to the liquor; 'Even' means the tea leaves are equal sized; 'Chesty' is a taint caused by unseasoned tea chests; 'Muscatel', a flavour or aroma similar to that of Muscat grapes, often found in second flush Darjeeling tea.

Tea arrives from the gardens to warehouses where they are initially inspected and then catalogued after tea tasting and auctioned. Nearly half of India’s tea crop is sold at auctions and the remaining are contracted through private sales.

Auction buyers get a catalogue, a sample for their independent evaluation along with brokers' valuation “and during an auction, it is competition between buyers that leads to price discovery,” explained Dasgupta, who fell in love with tea soon after he joined several decades ago as a graduate management trainee with his employee-owned firm.

Earlier, auctions took place in one of two halls at Nilhat House, with buyers bidding for the teas on offer. However, e-auctions were introduced in 2009, ending the romance and rivalry which marked these sales, though high-value Darjeeling teas continued to be auctioned physically at the ten-storey building till 2016, with a gavel deciding the buyer and the final price.

“Now each week we have e-auctions, and the buyer has a two-week window to make the payment,” said Dasgupta.

The buyers sit in anonymity of their offices and bid with a click of their mouse, but J Thomas’s auctioneers “still continue to sit in the old auction hall” formally dressed, “to conduct the auctions as they always did.” Most buyers are for the domestic Indian market, but agents representing foreign buyers snap up much of the coveted Darjeeling and orthodox tea from Assam’s gardens.

“We have roughly four tea seasons – first flush in March-April, second flush in May-June, Monsoon during the rainy season when the quality isn’t that great and Autumnal after that,” explained Sanjay Mukherjee, a tea consultant specialising in exports.

Darjeeling district of Bengal nestled in the Himalayan foothills produces just 7-8 million kgs of tea but robust demand for the leaf, often called the champagne of teas, from all over the world keeps prices high.

A PTI report on tea auctions at the beginning of the month showed that while CTC (Crush, tear and curl mechanically) tea sold at an average price of Rs 192 a kg, orthodox tea (loose leaf processed semi-manually) sold at an average of Rs 262 a kg, while Darjeeling tea (also loose long leaf but grown only in Darjeeling district) averaged Rs 360 a kg, with a third of it selling for over Rs 500 a kg.

In September 2014, a kilo of tea from the Makibari tea estate sold for a record of Rs 1.12 lakh, setting a record of sorts.

Different markets demand different kinds of teas. Dasgupta said, “Japan likes high-value first flush, very delicate, floral kinds … they are willing to pay a premium for that.” Germans like orthodox teas.

“The UK is more of a tea bag market, they want high-grade certification but are price conscious,” he added.

India’s domestic market has different needs for its teas - masala tea is preferred in western India, and Kashmir likes green tea with local infusions. While milk tea is the de rigueur in most parts of the country, except among the upper crust of society in Kolkata itself, where like the Nilhat tasters, people prefer their cuppa black without milk and often without sugar.