From a Chaiwala becoming the most popular and loved Prime Minister of our nation, to India being the second-largest producer of tea after China, ‘Chai’ definitely has a lot of significance in our country. And for all you Chai lovers out there, here’s a piece of interesting news. Golden Butterfly Tea produced by Assam’s Dikom Tea Estate near Dibrugarh got sold for a whopping ₹75,000 Per Kg at the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre(GTAC), breaking all records. This Golden Butterfly Tea was bought by one of the oldest tea shops in Guwahati, M/s Assam Tea Traders for their consumers, as reported by the GTAC Secretary, Dinesh Bihani. This old tea shop has also purchased a lot of speciality tea in past auctions at exorbitant record prices.
What’s Special About This Tea?
If you’re wondering about the reason why Golden Butterfly tea was sold at ₹75,000 per Kg, then here’s why- this speciality tea is prepared out of tea buds and not tea leaves. It has an edge over the usual tea coming from Assam estates. The Golden Butterfly tea has a bright yellowish hue instead of the usual black tea dark brown colour when brewed.
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Auction Centre
The Secretary of Guwahati Tea Auction Centre(GTAC) Dinesh Bihani, has said that this auction centre in Assam holds high regard in India, as it is in this very place where records are broken and history is rewritten. The GTAC has 665 sellers, 247 buyers, and nine brokers, besides 34 warehouses, registered with it.
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He also spoke to a reputed news agency about the opportunities that GTAC is giving to sellers, so they can sell their speciality tea at remunerative prices. According to him, GTAC has become a world-recognized tea hub for speciality and quality tea. So the best teas are always in demand and buyers are always ready to spend an exquisite amount to procure the finest quality of tea.
Auctions at GTAC are usually held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. There is an auction hall but the entire process has been online for the past 8 to 9 years. Apart from GTAC, India has 5 other tea auction centres- Kolkata (the oldest, set up in 1861), Siliguri, Kochi, Coimbatore and Coonoor. Registered members can operate in any auction in any centre in India.
What’s More?
When sellers and buyers, associated with the tea industry in Assam attend auctions they find this to be the best way to assess the value and quality of tea. Buyers assess tea by looking at its appearance, strength or quality of the liquid form, aroma and ‘keeping quality’. This is the quality of tea when kept stored for a long time in godowns or shops.
If you’re wondering how tea auctions take place, then here’s how. Tea Tasters will taste the tea and give their review on the quality of the leaf. The tea is then taken to the warehouse from the garden, and brokers do the sampling and tasting. This final valuation data is then published in the Tea Board of India’s auction website.
What Else?
So now you know how prestigious is the Golden Butterfly Tea, to be sold at a record-breaking amount of ₹75,000 Per Kg. But do you really think, you would be interested in investing in such an expensive kind of tea, no matter how exquisite or flavoursome it is? Like come on, it is a whopping ₹75,000 Per Kg. For such a price, you would expect to taste at least a hint of 22 karat gold.
Like we can tell you about another exquisite Indian tea, the Silver Tips Imperial grown in Darjeeling. Popularly known as ‘Champagne of Teas’ the tea leaves of this exotic tea are only plucked under a full moon night and packed before sunrise to capture the authentic aroma. Yup, this is what goes in preparing the perfectly brewed expensive tea.
So now that you know about the Golden Butterfly tea costing around ₹75,000 Per Kg and the Silver Tips Imperial which is carefully plucked only during the full moon, lets hope the tea mania sticks to the flavours rather than the prices. Till then, as long as India is breaking records, it’s just another reason for us to broaden our chests with pride after all our PM, a Chaiwala is running the country and chai is boosting our economy.