Spring Chinary Black

This is the garden waking up. Through late March and April, as the first warmth reaches the Kurseong valley, the heritage Chinary bushes of Giddapahar push out their first tender shoots of the year — two leaves and a bud, plucked by hand at first light before the sun grows strong.

Chinary is the old seed stock of Darjeeling, slower-growing and smaller-leafed than modern clonal varieties, and it gives the first flush its particular delicacy: a pale, bright liquor that tastes of the cool hillside it came from. The leaf is withered, rolled whole and only lightly oxidised, then fired and sorted to FTGFOP1 — the season, kept intact.