Darjeeling First Flush Black Tea

Darjeeling first flush is the first picking of the year, made in spring in the hills of West Bengal. The leaf is only lightly oxidized, so the cup is pale gold and brisk, with muscat grape, lily-like blossom and a hint of apricot. Brewed at 85°C, without milk.

Origin & Story

The first flush is Darjeeling in spring. After the cool, dry winter months, the bushes put out their first tender shoots, and from March into May those shoots are picked. The leaf is only lightly oxidized, so it stays greenish with bright tips, and the cup pours pale gold, light and floral, with a slight astringency.

Tasters reach for fruit and flowers to describe it: muscat grape, lily, a hint of apricot, and a fresh, brisk finish. Many compare its light body to a green tea, and it is brewed cooler and shorter than most black teas. Darjeeling has long been marketed as the Champagne of teas, and the first flush is the picking sellers most often hold up under that title.

The tea grows between about 600 and 2,000 meters in the hills of Darjeeling and Kalimpong, in West Bengal, India. It began in 1841, when Archibald Campbell, a surgeon and the first superintendent of Darjeeling, planted tea seeds he had brought from Kumaon, and commercial gardens followed in the 1850s. In 2004 Darjeeling became the first Indian product to win geographical indication protection, and the Tea Board of India now recognizes 87 estates entitled to use the name.

Use water at about 85°C and 2.5 g of leaf for 240 ml, and steep for two to three minutes in a porcelain teapot or a glass pitcher. Drink it plain, without milk or sugar, so the blossom and grape notes stay in front.

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