The Second Flush, Certified

The second flush is Assam's prized harvest: the early-summer leaf, fuller and maltier than the spring crop and heavy with golden tip. Here is the tea year by the calendar, why the summer leaf is the good one, and what "malty" actually is, measured to the compound.

Malt Is Built Late, and Separately From Color

Theaflavins and thearubigins build steadily as the leaf oxidizes. The malt note does not. It is a small family of Strecker aldehydes, stockpiled slowly during withering and mostly burned into aroma in the final heat, on its own separate clock.

Assam Tea

The canonical reference on Assam tea: the malty, brisk, full-bodied black tea grown in the Brahmaputra valley of northeast India from Camellia sinensis var. assamica. What it is, where it grows, how it is made and graded, and where it ends up.