Free Darjeeling by Jeff Koehler Page B

learnt so much from it that I’ve no hesitation to say what I’m today is due to tea,” he said upon retirement in a newspaper interview. 5
    Hanging in these back rooms are a number of framed certificates commemorating records reached in its auction rooms. They illustrate theprice difference between orthodox teas and CTC ones produced in the same area. One commemorates the Assam orthodox record being set at Rs 6,999 a kilo in August 2012 (then worth $127.25) by the Duflating Tea Estate. That same month, at the Halmari Tea Estate, the Assam CTC record was also reached: Rs 390 ($7.09), a paltry 5 percent of the orthodox tea’s amount. Halmari alone produces more than 2 million pounds, about 1 million kilograms, of tea annually, 95 percent of it CTC.
    The money, as the junior J. Thomas member pointed out when looking over the certificates, is in volume.

    At two P.M. Choudhury and his team are back in the auction hall trying to sell the remaining few hundred lots by three thirty or four p.m. Afternoons are more challenging; energy among the buyers can lag, and Choudhury presses hard to keep the auction moving at a steady pace.
    “I want to keep buyers around at the end,” he said of his strategy in preparing the order of sales. It’s neither alphabetical nor organized by value. “I start with traditionally good producing gardens, spread out the quality in pockets, mix it up.” The key is the beginning, as the first five or so pages of the catalog—about a hundred or so lots—set the “market mood.” Choudhury wields complete power in the order, another element of his far-reaching influence.
    While most gardens sell via private channels as well as at auction, some sell only through private means. These include those of the Ambootia group and the Chamong group, which counts Chamong, Marybong, Lingia, Tumsong, and Bannockburn in their Darjeeling fold of highly respected estates. According to Sujoy Sengupta, a marketing manager and key taster at the group, part of the issue for opting out of the auction was being “under the umbrella” of generalizations: good, medium, or bad. Chamong didn’t want their gardens to be characterized within these narrow categories. “Such simple terms don’t reflect our crop.”
    Some who trade within the auction system quietly say that the gardens who only sell to private buyers don’t have confidence in their tea’s quality. Chamong, though, likely knew they could sell their product for higher prices outside the system. Especially when dealing with high-end retailers such as Harrods, Whittard of Chelsea, Twinings, and Fortnum & Mason, even Nathmulls in Darjeeling, direct deals can make a garden more money.
    Tea merchant Vikram Mittal in New Delhi offered another reason for direct sales: Many private buyers simply don’t have access to theKolkata auction system. He said, “They can pay a little bit more—and would rather get it directly from the garden.” The immediacy and intimacy is appealing. “At auction there is a wall between garden and buyer—the broker.”
    Direct purchasing can also avoid one of the biggest disadvantages to the auction, the time lag, said Mittal, who buys using both methods. He puts that difference at about four weeks, the time it takes for samples to be drawn and sent to the broker, tasted, graded, valued, listed, shown, sampled, auctioned, and then dispatched to the buyer. (Choudhury estimates that about eight kilograms, or eighteen pounds, is lost in every lot from samples, a notable amount from the garden’s point of view.)
    The urgency in getting first flush teas into shops means many gardens and buyers prefer the direct method for spring teas. “Buying time is short,” said Choudhury. “The crop is small. The season is short.” Yet, he added, “there is a huge buying requirement.” The excitement of its being the year’s first teas adds a touch of frenzy. The second flush is longer and larger and has a bigger showing in auction.
    While