Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: Assam achieved a milestone in 'speciality tea' (pu'er tea), which fetched Rs 12,000 a kg at the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) yesterday.
Gauripur Tea Industry, Golaghat, makes pu'er tea cakes, compressed, disc-shaped blocks of post-fermented tea leaves traditionally originating from Yunnan, China. Gauripur Tea Industry started making this speciality tea in 2023 and sold it in a small-scale sale online. For the first time, pu'er tea cakes hit the GTAC yesterday and sold five kg at the rate of Rs 12,000 per kg.
Speaking to The Sentinel, the owner of Gauripur Tea Industry, Aparaj Saikia, said, "Pu'er tea is traditionally grown in Yunnan, China. We recreated that with minor changes. Gauripur Assam pu'er tea is our Assam-made expression of this traditional tea style, handcrafted from Camellia sinensis var. assamica, the tea variety naturally associated with Assam. We believe there is much more to Assam tea than what is traditionally known and consumed. This initiative is our exploration of what can be created from Assam's own tea varieties through alternative processing and craftsmanship. It takes three to ten days to make this speciality tea. Deviated from the tradition of 'eti koli duti pat' (one bud and two leaves), we need only take 'eti koli' (only one bud but no leaves) in making this speciality tea. The entire process is hand-made."
"We began producing this tea commercially in carefully crafted and small batches as part of our endeavour to explore and promote speciality tea from Assam, beyond the conventional black and green tea categories," Saikia said.
According to sources, the sale of pu'er tea at GTAC will pave the way for the sale of Phalap Tea, a traditional tea of the Singpho community of Assam, particularly in the Tinsukia and Margherita regions, through the auction centre in the near future. Phalap tea is made from the large leaves of the Camellia sinensis var. assamica. Traditionally packed in bamboo and aged, it develops a distinctive earthy, woody and smoky character, somewhere similar to pu'er tea.
The Assam government has already announced incentives like increasing the subsidy for the production of orthodox and other speciality teas at the rate of Rs 15 per kg.
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