Golden leaves

GUWAHATI: The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC), for the second time in less than a month, on Thursday fetched a world record price — Rs 40,000 — for 1kg of Golden Needles tea variety produced by the Donyi Polo Tea Estate in Arunachal Pradesh .

On July 24, the auction centre fetched a price of Rs 39,001 for 1kg of specialty boutique quality orthodox tea from the Manohari Tea Estate in Assam's Dibrugarh district.

"On Thursday, the GTAC broke its own world auction record when Golden Needles of the Donyi Polo Tea Estate was sold at Rs 40,000 per kg through pan India auction (Sale No. 34) by Contemporary Tea Brokers," sources said.

The tea was sold to Assam Tea Traders, which is one of the oldest tea shops in Guwahati. The owner of Assam Tea Traders, Lalit Kumar Jalan, said, "There is a rising demand for good tea and we are selling specialty tea regularly. This Golden Needles will be sold through Absolutetea.in, an online platform." The Golden Needles tea is made with only newly sprouted tips. The Yunnan province in China, which is just across Arunachal border in its east, is known as the cradle of ' gold tip teas '. This variety of tea has small buds which are carefully plucked and the leaves, which have a golden coating, are soft and velvety. The liquor of this special tea is sweet to taste and also has a rich aroma.

"It took lot of effort to make this type of tea. Earlier, the Silver Needles white tea had fetched Rs 17,001 per kg. Such type of teas can be made only when natural forces align with precise tea-making skills," Donyi Polo Tea Estate manager Manoj Kumar said. Specialty teas are encouraging more and more buyers and producers to come together, GTAC secretary Dinesh Bihani said. "We hope that these specialty teas will make us achieve our past glory on the world map. We are thankful to those producers who make great efforts to make such fine quality tea and also buyers who are buying and selling them to tea lovers," he added.

Donyi Polo estate's Pekoe White, another variety of tea developed in China, is made from the youngest and most tender handpicked leaf tips and buds that give a silver colour brew. This variety was sold for Rs 12,001 per kg at the GTAC last year.

