My love affair with tea tasting

My entry into the world of tea was not an accident — it was the fulfilment of a long cherished dream. I had studied in a school in Darjeeling, a place surrounded by tea gardens, which produced the world’s best teas.

After I finished college, I joined the Tea Board, with a posting in Brussels. I later did the same work for a year in the United States. I came back to India, determined to enter the tea industry, but no doors were open to me. I was told that tea was a male bastion and tea broking involved not only testing teas and auctioning them, but travelling up to the gardens in a rough terrain as well; it was no job for a woman.

After two years of continuous effort, Mr Vijoy Dudeja of Contemporary Tea, gave me a break. Thus, I became the first woman tea taster and auctioneer in the country, if not the world.

On entering the tea trade, I discovered that most of the stories I had heard were myths. Many tea-tasters smoked and drank alcohol, without any diminishing of their tasting abilities. I took up tasting as a challenge and continued my love affair with Darjeeling by specialising in the tasting of Darjeeling teas. I sold 1 Chest of Darjeeling tea at the auctions at Rs 13,001 per kg in Calcutta, a record at that time.

In over two decades of my job as a tea taster and auctioneer, I found that there was nothing in a taster’s job that a woman could not do. She could even wear lipstick and perfume, though not while tasting. All one needed was a good palate memory and dedication to the job. I rose to the position of director of Paramount Tea and Marketing, the company I joined after Contemporary Tea.

I had nurtured another idea and dream for a long time. It was to open a tea boutique, for the connoisseurs of good tea, where one could taste and buy teas. I got this idea from a lady in Nantes in France, who ran a small tea shop. I got the opportunity in 1988, once I obtained a small shop-space in Dakshinapan, a shopping complex, set up by KIT in Dhakuria.

The shop has been running for nearly two decades now, and after I have given up my full-time job, I am able to spend a lot of time at the shop. I have hundreds of loyal customers, some of whom come from abroad once a year and take away my teas. My shop has also been a meeting place for youngsters, mostly students.

I have also tried to convey some of my knowledge and experience of teas to newcomers. I had taught courses on tea run by the Paramount Academy of Technology and later at the Birla Institute of Futuristic Studies. Some of my students are well placed in the tea industry today.

I had felt for long that tea, as a beverage, was being challenged by soft drinks and more efforts needed to be put in to promote tea. I organised tea festivals in a big way for two successive years for which I received a lot of support from the industry. On both occasions, the festivals were opened by Jyoti Basu, the then chief minister of West Bengal, and were resounding successes.

Tea is a great beverage. It is the best anti-oxidant and is good for the heart. Contrary to what some people say, tea-tasters do not get throat cancer, since they sip tea and spit it out. The number of recipes that can made out of tea is mind-boggling and I am in the process of writing a book detailing them. I hope, I can give back something to the industry that has given me so much.