Tansa
The Tansa reservoir in the Sahyadri hills at first light, a band of mist lying along mirror-calm water.

तानसा/tansa/the river Bombay drinks

The long way round

A Mumbai tea house, third generation. We buy leaf from four gardens, blend it above the shop in Mahim, and sell it in a plain tin.

Scroll

Inside the shop in Mahim: a man weighing loose tea on a brass balance, shelves of unmarked tin canisters behind him.

घर/ghar/the house

Most tea has been through eight countries and a broker. Ours has been through two.

The garden, and a room above the shop where somebody tastes it at seven in the morning before anybody has eaten.

My grandfather sold tea by weight from this counter and wrote the blends in a book. We still use the book. The scales are the same scales. What changed is that we now buy the leaf ourselves rather than take what the broker had left.

Mahim, Bombay · third generation · four gardens

The estate year

One hill, one season worth selling

  1. Jfrost
  2. Ffrost
  3. M—
  4. Aflush
  5. M—
  6. Jmonsoon
  7. Jmonsoon
  8. Amonsoon
  9. S—
  10. O—
  11. N—
  12. Dfrost

How the leaf is made

Freshly plucked tea leaves, bright green, on a weathered wooden board. The same leaves withered: limp, curled, dulled to olive. The leaves rolled into twisted bronze-green strands. The finished leaf, dry and oxidised to deep copper-brown.
Plucked

पत्ती/patti/the leaf

01

Two leaves and a bud

Nothing below the second leaf goes in the basket. It is slower, it costs more per kilo, and it is the entire reason the cup tastes of anything. A machine takes the whole branch.

Hand-plucked · 1,840 m · April flush

02

Eighteen hours on hessian

Spread two leaves deep in a loft with the shutters open. The leaf loses about half its water and goes soft enough to roll without shattering. Too long and it turns to hay.

18 hours · 26 degrees · shutters open

03

Bruised, not crushed

Rolling tears the cell walls so the juice meets the air. The leaf twists into wiry strands and starts to smell of apple skin. Crush it instead and you get dust, which is what a teabag is.

45 minutes · hand-rolled in 4 kg batches

04

Four hours, then stopped

The leaf turns copper, then brown, then almost black. Somebody has to decide the exact minute to stop it with heat. On the gardens we buy from that decision is made by smell, by a woman who has made it for thirty years.

4 hours · stopped at 120 degrees

A cupping table: six identical white bowls in a row, spent leaf beside each, a man mid-taste with a spoon.

चाख/chakh/the taste

Nothing leaves the room until it has been tasted.

Six bowlsThe same weight of leaf, the same water, the same three minutes. If one variable moves, the comparison is worthless.
Seven in the morningBefore anybody has eaten. Palates are honest early and generous by eleven.
Taste, spit, move alongTwice down the row. The second pass is the one that decides, because by then you know what the range is.
Then it gets the nameIf a batch does not taste like the last one, it does not go in the tin. It gets sold on as what it is.

The four gardens

We buy. We do not pretend to own

मसाला/masala/the spice

Five spices. Ground the morning they are used, never before.

Whole chai spices in five piles on a steel counter: cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns and ginger.
Cardamomवेलची · 6 pods
Cinnamonदालचिनी · one quill
Cloveलवंग · 3 whole
Pepperमिरी · 4 corns
Gingerआले · a thumb, bruised
Tea poured in a long stream from a kettle into a cutting-chai glass through a strainer.

धार/dhaar/the stream

Then it is thrown.

Poured from a height through a strainer, eight or nine times. It cools it, it foams it, and it folds air through the milk. This is the part no machine has ever got right.

Three men standing under a blue tarpaulin at a Mumbai chai stall in the rain, holding glasses, one laughing.

Nobody in this city drinks tea alone. That is most of the point of it.

A plain deep green tea tin with a copper lid on a steel counter.

डबा/dabba/the tin

No label. The tea is the label.

  • 250 gabout 40 cups
  • April flushKotagiri, 1,840 m
  • Ground weeklyfive whole spices

£14 free UK delivery over £30

Order a tin

दुकान/dukan/the shop

If you make two hundred cups a day, talk to us about the sack.

We sell to about forty cafes and two hotels. It is the same tea, in ten kilo sacks, at a price that makes sense at that volume. Ask for a sample and we will post one.

Trade enquiries