Free Darjeeling by Jeff Koehler

Indian Tea Company and another hundred from the Bengal Tea Company. Originally named Thomas Marten & Company, the company began not as brokers of tea but of shellac, jute, and, foremost, indigo. “The color seeped from the packed chests [of indigo] and stained the length of Mission Row a deep abiding blue,” wrote a historian of the company. 2 The current building’s name—from nil (indigo) and hat (market)—reflects its legacy in dye, as does its colorful trim. For a century the company was controlled by the British. The first Indian chairman was appointed in 1962; the last member of the Thomas family, the fifth generation, left a year later; the company’s final Brit departed in 1972. 3
    Today, J. Thomas handles about one-third of all tea auctioned in India—almost 500 million pounds (200 million kilograms) a year. It conducts auctions not just at its main Kolkata center but also in other tea producing areas: Guwahati (Assam), Siliguri (the Dooars and Terai), Cochin (Kerala), Coonoor (in the Nilgiris of Tamil Nadu), and Coimbatore (a couple hours farther south in the same state). They also keep correspondents at the other main tea auction houses in Asia and Africa—Colombo (for Sri Lanka teas), Chittagong (for Bangladesh), Jakarta (for Indonesia), Mombasa (for Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi, and others), and Limbe (for Central Africa).
    Over the last few years, tea auctions in India have become computerized, with buyers sitting silently in a room in front of identical laptops clicking their mouse to make bids or done anonymously online, where buyers do not even know who they are bidding against. That is, all except for the Darjeeling tea auction at J. Thomas’s Kolkata branch. The tradition simply remains too entrenched to halt. Anindyo Choudhury is the only tea auctioneer left using the open outcry system.
    Choudhury came to tea, like many in the industry, randomly, almost on a whim. “It was an unknown field, mostly word of mouth, family connections,” he explained in his office. “When I finished university”—the University of Delhi, one of India’s highest-ranked institutions—“someone said, ‘You want to try tea?’” Choudhury smiled at the thought, at the simple suggestion that led to his life’s work.
    He spent a year with Tata Tea and then joined J. Thomas. After working in their Siliguri office, he moved to the headquarters in Kolkata. For the last few years, he has been in charge of Darjeeling tea for the company.
    As auctioneer, though, he does more than simply call out lots and take bids. Choudhury spends just one day a week in the auction room. He passes more time in the tasting room, where he personally tastes each lot going up for sale and sets its value. That means that he tastes around 60 percent of all tea produced in the district. Every week, in a day and a half, he tastes a thousand different Darjeeling teas. The renowned wine critic Robert M. Parker tastes ten thousand bottles a year. 4 Choudhury does that many second flush teas alone.
    Located on the fifth floor of Nilhat House, the long, narrow tasting room is at least twenty-five generous paces in length, with windows running along one wall and four parallel and unbroken rows of tasting benches cleaving it into strips. Choudhury pulls on a snug blue apron fronted with a deep V-neck that shows off tie and collar and works quickly down the long rows of tasting pots, cups, and teas. An assistant pushing a wheeled podium and a massive ledger follows behind, jotting down his remarks and initial values. Choudhury tastes not only each of those coming up for sale, but also retastes certain ones from the previous auction to see why they sold higher, or lower, than his valuation.
    “I am tasting with the manufacturing process in mind. What was right about the tea, what was not,” he said. J. Thomas furnishes gardens with reports on what they send to auction, and Choudhury travels frequently to Darjeeling to taste at the gardens