A rare variety of tea from the Manohari Tea Estate was auctioned for Rs. 50,000 per kg at Guwahati Tea Auction Centre on Tuesday, setting up a new record. Last year, the same tea was sold for Rs 39,001 per kilogram. The record which was broken by Golden Needle variety from the Donyi Polo Tea Estate in Arunachal Pradesh was sold for Rs 50,000 per kilogram.
Annually, Rajan Lohia, owner of Manohari Tea Estate produces about 25 lakh kilograms of tea from his three estates in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh and Sivasagar districts. From this only 2 kg has struck gold. Mr. Lohia told that “We made 5 kg of this handmade tea but only 2 kg got sold at the auction. We will have to wait for favourable conditions next year for producing the next lot.
Mr. Lohia told that “The weather was not supportive at all. The gold tea is made from buds and not the tea leaves”.
He added that “It is made from the finest clones, the P-126 which is said to be the best clone”. He said the buds are plucked early morning in the second flush season in May and June the ‘third flush’ from July-September and the ‘fourth flush’ from October-November.
He added that a little less than 6 kg of tea buds went into producing a kilogram of the record breaking tea that yields a golden hue when brewed. A kg of market tea consumes an average of 4.5 kg of tea leaves. It took a week for plucking and sorting of leaves to finishing of each kilo.
Mangilal Maheshwari of the Sourabh Tea Traders had the highest bid on Tuesday morning auction. Maheshwari told that, he had bought 2 kilograms of Manohari Gold tea in 2018, from a seller who purchased a kilogram liked it very much and had asked me to keep an eye out when the tea hits the market again. He added that he retailed the remaining tea at a enormous price of Rs 8,000 per 100 grams.
