How to appreciate India's CTC and dust teas
₹1,500 a kilo at the Kolkata tea auction for their CTC tea, achieving speciality status— average prices at auction for Assam CTC is under ₹300/kilo. This got me thinking about our perception of tea, and the contradictory world of leaf tea and CTC drinkers. It’s hardly a great divide.
I often seek leafy teas but they just won’t do for my first cup, which is milk tea made with CTC. Culturally, we are CTC drinkers. And the numbers don’t lie either—over 80% of the tea we make and consume is CTC.
In 2009, Dibrugarh-based Bhaskar Hazarika started Hookhmol Tea, making only CTC. His teas have consistently topped the charts at the weekly tea auctions at Guwahati and Kolkata. He lists three attributes as necessary for tea quality—discipline, which is the ability to drive a huge work force to pluck every single tea bush within seven days; knowledge in growing and making tea; and art, for both passion and skill to make a delightful cup of tea.
This is as true for CTC as it is for any other tea. But consider that the CTC machine itself came into the picture in the 1950s and gained wider use by the 1970s. For a price-sensitive new India, cost remained a factor and the CTC production enabled it by facilitating large volume production.
“Our per capita income remained very low for many decades after independence," says Hazarika. “Maybe to cater to that need, companies gave up on discipline and art to bring down the cost. The only way to reduce cost was to cut corners.
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