What the letters on a chest of orthodox tea actually mean
STGFOP1 is not a serial number. Every letter describes something about the leaf in the chest — and none of them describes how good the tea is.
Journal
Notes from the garden and the factory — the season, the manufacture, and the tea itself.
Why an Assam tea garden looks like woodland
Visitors expect neat open rows and find something closer to a forest. The trees are not decoration — they are the single biggest agronomic decision an Assam garden makes.
Orthodox or CTC: the same leaf, two different teas
They come off the same bushes, picked to the same standard, on the same morning. Everything that separates them happens in the factory.
The hours after the leaf is picked
Everything a garden spends the year building can be lost in an afternoon. This is what the factory is actually doing.
Kaziranga, our neighbour
A rhino stands under a tea shoot in our mark. It is a neighbour, not a motif — and neighbours come with obligations.
How tea came to Upper Assam
The usual telling starts with a Scotsman in 1823. It should start with the people who were already drinking it.