J Thomas & Co. is with selling around 200 million kilogrammes of tea, one of the largest tea-auctioneer in the world. The visit to India brought me the inspiration to drink more tea even also in high summer than usual in Switzerland in winter times. So, l took the opportunity to inform me more about the tea production and the cultivation works.
As true connections, l had the possibility to visit the J Thomas house in Kolkata for a day to understand the work of the enterprise. First of all, we met the CMD and was welcomed by him. After a short introduction we could join two employees who works in the company for several years. Before we entered the tea tasting room, they explained us briefly how the experts rates the different teas inside the world largest tea tasting room. Three different features make the final price of an enjoyable tea. Firstly, the colour of the tea plays an important role in the rates, for example if the colour is brighter of a tea with milk it is better than a more red colour (pinkish).
Secondly, you will recognize a good tea if it do not contain many branches. In addition, the size of the leaves makes a big taste difference. Furthermore, the colour and the smell of the tea leaves has also an important point in the value of a tea, depending on the sort of the tea-tree it has to fulfill some clearly colours or even a decent smell to get a good vote.
Last but not least, the colour of the tea leaves after the hot water was served. After a certain time the water will be separated from the tea leaves, so you can see how the quality of the different leaves are. Below are few of the picture of the tea tasting center.
To sum up, to become a tea taster you must have a lot experience, especially when you need to recognize the difference between hundreds if not thousands of teas. I never thought that the tea tasting part would be so diverse in the criteria of smelling and recognizing the different teas by the colours. In my point of view, making such a nice experience would help me the next time find my correct tea type or even flavor.
Diego Zbinden
Switzerland
