Darjeeling Sungma First Flush, Loose-leaf Tea from Happy Earth Tea in album tea

In Albums: tea

Fine tea leaves with a heterogenerous color, ranging from light green to brown, curly, some with fine hairs

Aug 20th, 2013, by Alex Zorach

This photo shows Darjeeling First Flush Tea from Sungma Estate. This tea was provided as a sample by Happy Earth Tea. The grade of this tea is SFTGFOP1, a very high grade.

Note the very light color of some of the leaves; the overall character of this tea was more like a green tea, both in color and flavor, than like a typical black tea. It is classified as a "black" tea due to production method, but a "hard wither" during production, enabled by the dry air in early spring in the high-altitude region of Darjeeling, dries out the leaves, thus preventing them from fully oxidizing the way they normally do in black tea.

The production of these high-grade teas is a highly involved product and I think of them as an artisan product like a fine wine or the preparation of world-class cuisine.

Like all of the first flush teas I've tried from Happy Earth Tea, I thought this tea was exquisite. You can read my review here.