Leaves and Liquor

Tea Tasting With Atanoo Baroowa

The professional tea taster is one of the most influential people in the tea industry. While tasters primarily assess the quality of tea, their assessments also impact a tea’s price and marketability. But what exactly does a tea taster do? We’ll try and get some answers in our chat with Atanoo Baroowa. Atanoo is a veteran tea taster and Managing Director of Associated Brokers.

Atanoo, we’re really excited to turn our attention to tea tasting. Why don’t we start with your background?

I was born in a small town named Nagaon, my hometown, in the north eastern state of Assam in India. I am the second of five siblings.

I did my early schooling at St. Edmunds in Shillong (at the time, it was the state capital of Assam). Shillong was also popularly known as the “Scotland of the East”. Not far from Shillong is Cherrapunji nee’ Sohra, which has the distinction of being the wettest place in the world! Nestled in the beautiful hills of Shillong was my alma mater, run by a band of dedicated Irish Christian Brothers. Thereafter, I went to an army school in Assam until the 10th grade. I went off to university in Guwahati, where I majored in English Literature at Cotton College. I ventured away from Assam to get my Masters in Personnel Management (Human Resources Development) and Industrial Relations from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Bombay, nee’ Mumbai.

How did the transition to tea happen?

Well, with a degree in Human Resource Development (HRD), I briefly joined an HRD related job. However, by sheer coincidence, it was not long before I was offered a job as a Tea Taster which I accepted, and started in January, 1976. I am currently a Managing Director at Associated Brokers.

What is your role at the firm?

My job is that of a tea taster and auctioneer. We are involved in the marketing of teas which are sold through the auction centers in various parts of India as well as privately.

That’s certainly a remarkable career change — from human resources to tea! Well, now is a good time to delve into the business of tea tasting. I have often wondered how the role of the professional tea taster evolved through history.

Well, it is difficult to really give accurate insights into the historical origins of tea tasters, but one presumes that they have been around since the discovery of tea itself, well before the advent of the auction system.

Tea tasters have probably been highlighting the finer points of tea for hundreds of years, ever since tea drinking came into vogue. This is especially the case in places where green tea was a popular beverage, as in China and Japan. In fact, the elaborate Japanese tea ceremony could not have taken place without someone on hand to ascertain the quality of tea that was being offered and to highlight its finer points and nuances.

However, when it comes to the profession of the tea taster, the historical origins are, I am sure, linked with the advent of the auction systems in London and in India. This breed of professionals had their job cut out for them. Their primary role was to determine the quality attributes of tea so that they could be assessed for their intrinsic value and marketability in the auctions.

That’s interesting. However, I have always been intrigued by the question of whether a tea taster is born or made. Is it an innate talent, or can the right kind of training make a taster out of anyone?

I think tea tasters in a sense are always made. It is not an inborn talent. However, having said that, there is no standard text-book oriented system by which we can teach and learn tea tasting. The evaluation of quality must be learned over time and that can only come with a good teacher.

It is very much a guru-sishya-parampara (teacher-pupil-tradition) method of learning, and is therefore an ongoing process. I would compare it to the methods used to teach a student how to play music. The uninitiated have to accept the teacher’s point of view until they are sufficiently experienced to independently arrive at an assessment themselves.

In my opinion, the fifth sense plays an equally important role as the others, because to be a good taster one has to be a very good listener too.

Let’s say I wanted to get into the tea tasting profession — any advice?

There are a few professional institutes around today which train people in tea as a profession. However, tasting is only a part of their curriculum. There is no institute that trains people exclusively in tea tasting. In fact, tea training institutes normally send their trainees to us for a stint on tea tasting!

Do you impose any restrictions on tasters (or trainees) in order to keep their taste buds sharp?

Well, there are no restrictions imposed on a tea taster, such as drinking, smoking or having pungent or spicy food. What is vitally important, however, is that the taster must taste teas with a normal palate. In other words you cannot go into a tasting session after having a few pints of beer or a few glasses of wine or spirits!

And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Can you walk us through the actual process of tasting tea?

Definitely. First, however, a little more insight into what exactly a tea taster does will help your readers understand this profession. Let me clarify an important point: the term “tea tasting” is somewhat misleading as it not only encompasses a sense of taste but that of sight, smell and touch. In other words four of the five senses are used in the evaluation of tea. In absolute terms the quality of tea is assessed on the basis of the following factors:

• Appearance of the tea — the dry leaf;
• The color of the infused leaf — infusions;
• The color of the liquor and characteristics of the cup — liquors.

Let’s start with the dry leaf. What should we be looking out for?

Assessment of the dry leaf is visual as well as tactile, because the “feel” informs the taster to what degree the tea is grainy or flaky or spongy. The olfactory senses also come into play — smelling the dry leaf gives the tea taster some indication of what to expect from the liquors of a particular tea. It also helps determine if any foreign taint is present in the leaf.

The first sensation, however, that a tea taster experiences is that of the weight when he pours the tea onto a turn-out. Normally, if the tea is light, it is indicative of perhaps a poor plucking standard, or of too soft a wither^* of light cuts.

* Note: Withering is one of the stages of tea manufacture. During withering, harvested leaves are spread on withering chambers and become flaccid and lose moisture. Hence, withering affects the weight of the leaf.

The color of the leaf is also important. Dull teas are indicative of poor quality. This could be for a variety of reasons such as, insufficient firing^*, over handling and, of course, a poor green leaf standard. Teas may be blackish or brownish, but they must possess bloom, which indicates good sheen.

* Note: Firing is one of the stages of tea manufacture. During firing, leaves are spread on drying chambers. Regulated volumes of hot air at certain temperatures are blown over the leaves. This process is essential for determining the flavor profile of the resulting tea.

Cleanliness is a desirable characteristic and teas must be as free from fiber as possible.

The size and uniformity of the grade are also very important aspects. The tea taster has to take both these into account when making a qualitative commercial investment.

What are you looking for in the infusion?

The examination of infusion is yet another important aspect of the determination of quality. Apart from the desirable coppery bright color, the infused leaf may show other characteristics. For example, they could be greenish, mixed, dull or dark.

So far it appears that sight has been the predominant sense being used. What about the smell and taste of the liquor?

Well, the evaluation of liquors involves the senses of sight, taste and smell. The quality of the liquor is judged first by its appearance and then its taste. The color of the liquors of good teas when hot should be bright and initially clear with a distinct yellow tinge. As the cup cools, a creaming^* down should be noticeable. The faster and thicker the creaming down, the better the quality of tea.

* Note: The cream is the precipitate that is obtained when the tea cools.

Strength and body are desirable characteristics in a tea. We must differentiate between strong and thin liquors. According to Keegal, a noted Dutch tea expert, the difference between these terms may be best illustrated by the difference between watery, skim milk and a full, rich creamy milk.

Briskness is one of the most important characteristics that a tea taster takes into account when evaluating the quality of tea. Briskness can perhaps be best explained by relating it to drinking a fresh bottle of soda water which has a pungent and slightly astringent taste vs. drinking a stale soda which tastes flat.

How do we perceive taste?

The human tongue is a remarkable organ that can taste, masticate and swallow, among other talents. Its rough upper surface is covered with papillae which carry a total of about 10,000 taste buds. These are capable of detecting four basic tastes: sweet and salt at the tip of the tongue, sour on the sides of the tongue and bitter at the back of the tongue.

Earlier it was thought that all tasting takes place on the upper surface of the tongue but that is not the case. There are sweet and salt taste buds elsewhere in the mouth, especially on the upper throat. Also, the primary tastes of sour and bitter are on the roof of the mouth at the point where the hard palate meets the soft palate.

At the end of the palate are the two opening of the nostrils. Resting inside these nostrils are olfactory senses which carry these messages of "tastes" to the brain and help in evaluating various tastes other than the basic taste (for example, smoke: high fire, burn, contamination, etc.)

It is also pertinent to point out that a layman to tasting can also be made to understand how to associate tea tastes with tastes of food. For example, a high fire can be associated with oven fresh biscuits, smoke can be associated with ham, burnt taste can be associated with dark chocolate and case hardening can be associated with a piece of aubergine (eggplant) fried in hot oil which burns the outer layer and blackens it but leaves the inside raw and green.

Certain other factors can also affect tasting. For example, the type of water used, the effects of boiling water at various temperatures and the effects of addition of milk of different kinds all have serious implications to the perception of taste.

The nose is considered the main organ of smell and taste. There are a few million odor detecting cells high up in the nasal passage and therefore, a good taster educates the nose as well as the tongue and upper palate and develops it to its full and extraordinary potential of smell and taste.

Calling the nose the main organ of taste as well as smell requires a little more explanation. The tongue is the true organ of taste but it is very crude in its ability. It can distinguish only four qualities explained above — sweet, salt, sour and bitter. All other tastes are detected not on the surface of our tongues but on the small odor-sensitive patches in our nasal cavities.

As I have enumerated, the tea taster in the process of tasting tea, looks into all parameters of appearance, infusions and color and taste before finally determining the quality of teas that have been tasted.

But aren’t these evaluations inherently subjective? If three people tasted the same teas, isn’t it likely that they would all come to different conclusions?

Well, one can say that tasting is subjective to a certain extent, but most qualified tasters can identify the broad parameters of the quality of tea in terms of appearance, infusions, brightness, strength and briskness as well as the various flavors.

What impact does the taster’s review have on the final price of the tea?

The tasters review on quality is very important in determining a fair value in terms of price because most tasters correlate the intrinsic value of tea with the current market trends for various categories of tea to arrive at such a value. This helps them to market teas at remunerative prices in the public auctions as well as privately.

As a child, I remember being fascinated watching my father taste teas. How many cups do you typically taste in one day?

On a typical day in the office a taster may taste an average of about 500 cups of brewed tea! These are typically done in batches. I am providing you with a glossary of tea tasting terms which your readers might find interesting. These terms relate to appearance, infusions and liquors depending on the type of manufacture.

How would an amateur with no background in formal tea tasting go about differentiating quality teas?

Differentiation of quality tea from inferior tea can, for an amateur, be a little difficult to fathom and slightly overwhelming. However, here are three factors that can help an amateur to determine good quality tea:

• Visual: the appearance of the leaf should be clean and have some bloom or sheen
• By the addition of milk: in a cup of tea, the addition of milk should make the liquor look bright as opposed to dull or drab
• By taste: the tea should be sweetish in taste to the palate, as opposed to being harsh or bitter.

Having said that, it is very difficult to enunciate exactly what makes one tea better than the other. These likes are based on the drinking preferences of people in various parts of the country and the world. For example, some people like drinking a lighter cup of tea with some flavor in it or a tea sans milk and a dash of fresh lime juice in it. On the other hand, in a lot of places people drink a very thick and strong cup of tea, where 75% of the component of the cup may be milk. In other cases teas are flavored with condiments like cardamom, cinnamon, chamomile, ginger and cloves, to name just a few.

So how does one brew a good cup of tea?

The brewing of a cup of tea is an art and normally it should be brewed in a manner where the water is not over boiled and the lea leaves are allowed to infuse in water for a certain period of time (which depends on the type of tea) before it is strained and ready to drink. Two key factors which affect the brewing of a cup of tea is the type of water used and the degree of boiling of the water.

Ok — so the teas have been tasted and assessed by the professionals. They’re now ready to enter the market. What is the role of the auctioneer?

Most tea in India gets sold through auctions. The art of selling teas in the auctions is very interesting. It requires a fair amount of oratory and persuasive skills and in-depth knowledge to be able to extract the best possible prices for every lot of tea on offer. Tea is offered to a cross section of buyers who normally attend auctions on any given day.

Another important skill that the auctioneer must possess is the ability to sell teas at a very brisk pace. A certain speed has to be maintained in the selling of teas and therefore he must be able to weigh various options quickly and react to the bidding that takes place for every lot of tea that comes under the hammer.

On average, teas are sold at a speed of about three lots a minute, so the auctioneer has very little reaction time to arrive at decisions before a lot is knocked down.

Tea broking firms are adept at using their expertise and skills to sell the teas in the auctions at remunerative prices. However, together with all these skills, the basic laws of demand and supply play a big factor in the ulimate price of tea.

Where are the major auction centers in India?

There are four auction centers in Northern India and three in South India. The Northern India centers are in Kolkata, Guwahati, Siliguri and Jalpaiguri and the South India centers are in Kochi, Coonoor and Coimbatore. The first auction center in India was established in Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1861.

How are prices of tea affected by global supply and demand? Does the broker give advice to growers on what to produce and when?

Planters approach the art of growing teas in different ways in different areas, depending on growing conditions. Parameters like climatic conditions, soil conditions, rainfall, yields, and many other factors are taken into account when growing teas.

However, there is definitely a link between supply and demand of tea around the world and the producer has to decide whether to produce a particular variety of tea or a combination of varieties so that they can take advantage of various markets, keeping in mind the resources available at their disposal. However, it has always been seen that those producers who maintain a good equilibrium in producing a consistent type of tea (of any category) always gain as opposed to other producers who tend to chase markets depending on the latest demand for particular types of teas in various markets.

Sounds like slow and steady wins the race?

Yes, definitely. It is also important to note that an over supply of any variety of tea leads to tumbling prices. Therefore, tea brokers (like us) have a great responsibility in advising producers of future market trends. This helps them to determine the appropriate manufacturing policy they need to adopt from year to year.

Table 1: Indian Tea Production (2004-2006). This chart shows details of production, sold quantity and export figures for the last three years. The sum total of auction sold quantities deducted from the production figures will give us the approximate total quantity sold privately. [Source: Tea Board of India]

	2006	2005	2004
Production (million kgs)	955.5	928.0	893.2
Sold Qty. in Auctions	484.6	496.6	455.9
Private Sales (Production - Auction)	470.9	431.4	437.3
Export	197.7	199.1	203.9

Table 2: Domestic Tea Consumption in India (2004-2006). Domestic consumption has been pegged at 805 m. kgs in 2006. These figures are based on the assumption that the growth in consumption in the last few years is @ 3% per annum. The per capita consumption of tea has also increased from approx. 650 gms per person to approx. 715 gms per person. Estimated domestic consumption figures for the last three years are given below.[Source: ITA / Indian Tea Association]

	2006	2005	2004
Domestic Consumption (million kgs)	805.0	780.0	755.0

How did the auction system get started?

Broking houses like ours were established with the advent of the auction system. Auctions were inspired and driven by producer groups to create a transparent platform for marketing their teas. Using the auction system, teas from various growing regions could be offered at one time and at one place, to the largest possible representation of buyers, thereby maximizing competition in a completely transparent fashion. A nice benefit that occurs is that the auctions help to ensure timely payments to producers and safe and correct delivery to buyers.

Because of these benefits, independent and professional entities (tea broking firms like ours), were set up. We are entrusted and empowered to operate the auctions and act as sentinels of the whole system. We play a vital role in the industry.

On to a slightly divergent topic — cloning. The practice of cloning tea bushes is gaining increasing popularity among growers. Why is this so?

Not being a planter and a field man, it would be difficult for me to talk authoritatively on clones. However, one would like to say that earlier, most teas were grown from tea seeds. The first clones were released by Tocklai Research Association in 1949. When the bushes were of a seed progeny, no two bushes were of the same character even though they came from the same variety of seed.

With the advent of clones, bushes of a particular variety of clone had similar characteristics of the parent clone. Clones are also hardier as compared to seed and more resistant to pests and diseases. Also with the advent of clones, various types of clones were researched and introduced for various types of manufacture, i.e. there were certain clones which were available for CTC manufacture on account of their good cup characteristics whereas they were not suitable for orthodox manufacture on account of poor tip content.

There were some clones which gave a blackish appearance to the leaf whereas others gave a more brownish appearance. There were certain clones which were very high yielding but cup characteristics were quite poor. Some clones were very useful for orthodox manufacture as they had a very high tip content which added to the style and appearance of orthodox tea but did not possess good liquoring properties or high yields. There were some clones which were more versatile and had the advantages of desirable yield, style, leaf and cup characteristics.

You grew up in the largest tea producing region in the world. Tell us a little bit about your home state of Assam, and the other tea growing areas of India.

Tea is grown primarily in the north eastern areas of India and in South India. In North India it is grown at elevations of up to 6000/7000 ft above sea level in Darjeeling and in the Nilgiri hills in South India. Assam produces roughly 50% of India’s total tea production. There are other areas like North Bengal or the Dooars and Terai region of West Bengal and places in Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland where tea is grown.

The North East of India is a very colorful and picturesque part of the country and varied in flora and fauna. It is also a melting pot of various cultures and civilizations. Assam also has a major river, the Brahmaputra, flowing through the state. The Brahmaputra originates in Tibet where it is known as the Tsangpo. It flows into Assam where it is known as the Luit or the Brahmaputra and forms the lifeline of the people of Assam. Assam also boasts of the Kaziranga National Park which is a world heritage site. There is also another world heritage site in Assam which is known as Manas Wild Life Park.

North Indian tea growing areas have fascinating scenic beauty, what with backdrops like the majestic Himalayas, the lush forests and sylvan surroundings in the Dooars and Assam, rich flora of varied colors and hues and fauna as varied as the famous one horned Rhino, the Hoolock Gibbon, the only ape of its kind in India, to the Royal Bengal tiger, the Indian Gaur or Bison and other innumerable species of birds and animals. The area is a nature lovers’ and wildlife enthusiasts’ delight.

On a more personal note, tell us about your family, and your interests outside the world of tea.

Other than my career in tea, I have a number of interests which include reading, music, movies, the outdoors, nature and wildlife , photography, traveling, singing, trekking, angling, walking, quizzing, intelligent and witty humor, writing, poetry and experiencing cuisines from across the continents!

My wife, Monjula, is a home maker and has worked with physically and mentally disabled children for quite some time now. She is also a chef par excellence. Our son, Dhritiman, is a creative copywriter and works for an advertising agency in Delhi.

Atanoo — thank you so much for a fascinating journey through the world of tea tasting. I have to ask — what type of tea do you drink when you’re not at work?

I normally prefer to drink a cup of light Darjeeling tea sans milk with a dash of sugar. However, I am not too fussy because in my profession I cannot afford to drink a cup of tea that is to my liking every single time, what with the innumerable ways that tea is brewed all over India!

Atanoo Baroowa currently serves as Managing Director at Associated Brokers. We are grateful to him for so generously sharing his extensive knowledge and precious time with us. Please refer to the tea tasting glossary for definitions of terms used in this article.