This year’s first flush Darjeeling has been around for a few months now and the second flush harvest is currently being shipped to retailers around the world.
To make this post less lonely, I’ll share some of my impressions. I’ve tried about 20 or so different teas from this year’s first flush, ranging from very high to medium quality. The very high quality teas had some good teas, although not quite as good as in some years. What I found interesting was that most of the medium high to average teas didn’t show as much difference as I’m used to. Some notable exceptions are Singbulli, which produced a really nice SFTGFOP and Soureni Estates, both of which I decided to stock. Other nice teas I tried were from Puttabong (and long time favorite of mine) and Jungpana Estates. I’ve written about the Singbulli and Soureni on my blog if you want to have a look.
This year’s Darjeeling first flushes had quite a problem to be distributed, which could explain the lack of widely publicized reviews. The problem was an export embargo on Darjeeling teas that was put into place by a labour union at the end of February and was only lifted at the end of March. The union demanded an increase of minimum wage for tea workers of roughly 150% and used the embargo to demonstrate its power. The union lifted its embargo after the Darjeeling Tea Association agreed to raise the minimum daily wage to 90 Rupees (from 67 rupees previously).

I had the Makaibari first flush OP. Other than having a vegetal front (like a green tea), it was still quite good.

I forgot to mention, the Thurbo from Lochan Tea that was linked to in the other thread is a pretty solid, nice tea as well.

We have tried around 30-40 invoices from the major gardens in Darjeeling and selected few. We stocked jungpana (sold out), arya, giddapahar, castleton (sold out), okayti and rohini. Yaya is right about the embargo but thankfully it was solved within time otherwise would have resulted in losses. Someone who is not familiar can read all about it here – http://blog.darjeelingteaxpress.com/2011-darjeeling-first-flush-stalemate-continues/