Comments on: Arya Ruby: Darjeeling 1st Flush 2008

By: John

John — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:05:33 +0000

Nice review…..I think you should try the Castleton Moonlight 2nd Flush 2009 at http://www.teaemporium.net,its a great tea that will create a new quality mark for high quality Darjeeling teas

By: Jo

Jo — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:10:34 +0000

“… especially considering a bottle of wine only affords a few glasses”

… and you pretty much have to drink the wine in one session, too!

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 05:20:06 +0000

Thanks for the comment Jo. I wondered whether the leaf size was why you suggested more teaspoons – also noticed another large leaf tea you sent me where you recommended quite a few teaspoons. I’ll make a note of this in the review.

Also, you make an interesting point regarding the price of the tea. I think it comes down to what you’re accustomed to paying. A year ago, I would have gasped at the thought of paying $50 for 100 grams of tea; now, not really. As you say, compare it to the price of wine to put it into perspective (especially considering a bottle of wine only affords a few glasses).

By: Jo

Jo — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:42:31 +0000

Eric,
a short note to the “high tea to water ratio” for this tea (or any tea for that matter). The tea to water ratio is generally about 5-6g of tea for 500ml of water. This holds true for most teas if brewed “English style” (i.e. not gong fu). Since most people don’t have a scale at home that can measure sub-gram quantities, volumetric guidelines (i.e. teaspoons) are generally easier to follow.
Because the Arya Ruby is a very large leaf tea (for Darjeeling at least), you need more teaspoons to get 6g than with a small leaf variety like many Assam teas, which pack much more densely. As you can see, you’re actually not changing the leaf/water ratio at all, you’re just compensating for the larger leaf size.

Here’s some more information to put the price mark into perspective: as you have stated, this tea really is the standard that other Darjeelings have to be compared to. Arya Estate produces a range of different first flush teas, all of them much cheaper than their flagship, the Ruby. The production of this tea is very small (~200kg per year, not tens to hundreds of tons as most other teas). If this tea was a bottle of wine of equally high quality and extremely limited production, you’d quickly have to pay absurd prices for it.

And this is what the beauty of tea is: even very expensive teas (to put it into perspective, there are teas out there that cost easily 5-10 times as much) are affordable. 100g of Arya Ruby makes you about 60 cups of tea. If you just infuse the leaves once (I often re-infuse them quite successfully), a cup will cost you less than NZ$1! If you think about what your average mediocre cup of coffee costs at the cafe, I’d say that Arya Ruby’s luxury is an absolute bargain…