Tagged: trade

The Garden's Mark: How to Read the Auction Room to Find Good Assam

A grade tells you the leaf size, not the cup. The garden's mark does: read year after year at the Guwahati auction by buyers who taste before they bid, it is the trade's running verdict on how one estate's tea actually drinks, and it is the best shopping tool a drinker has for seeking out Assam worth buying.

The Assam Tea Trade

Assam tea is grown by two entirely different kinds of producer and sold down two entirely different channels, one of them compulsory by law. The canonical account of who grows it, how it reaches a buyer, what the auction settles that a private sale does not, and the rules that bind both.