Assam Tea Company?

Never purchased from it ever but I would certainly give Assam Tea Company a try. It is by reputation a nicely run company with some good organic plantings up in North East Assam - in the quaintly named Doom Dooma area. Not to be confised with the much larger Assam Company Ltd, founded in 1839 that has dozens of estates including the well known Hazelbank Garden.

Nigel at Teacraft

I have purchased from them once. I thought the prices were quite reasonable, the tea fresh, and I enjoyed several of their higher-end Assams, especially "Cream of Assam, #510" and "Satrupa Golden Pekoe". I didn't as much care for "Kama Black 'Extra Large Leaf Black Tea' " but the large leaves were stunning to look at and the tea was very acceptable. I didn't try any organics. None of the four were the "knock your socks off" Assam I would like to find some day, but no one else seems to have that mythical tea either.

Curious about it as an oddity, a group of us shared some of their "Koucha," a "Japanese Broken Leaf Black Tea," that was really very nice. I never imagined that any blacks came out of Japan, especially not of such high quality. Today I don't find it on their website (which is irritatingly difficult to navigate), but it may just be evading me.

Have you bought any tea from Upton? Like you said about Assam I found their tea acceptable but not special. I liked the Nahorhabi bit it was not as strong as I would like and at $16 for 100 grams I am not going to order it again. I might give Assam a try.

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I am in a minority on this, but I have tried maybe 20 or more Assams from Upton and have not found any of them really very satisfying, and some of them enormously over priced. "Not as strong as I would like" pretty much describes my whole experience with Upton. Someday I may go back and try some more of their Assam, but for now I've crossed them off my list. Also, by having so many very similar teas on offer, they have managed to make variety and choice into a fault! Let me know what you think of Assam (also called Tfactor, apparently).

Upton's has a new Assam Sewper, TA52, that I'm going to try next. I'm using up their Season's Pick Assam fannings I got in the Fall, but they're not selling it anymore. Toci

I had some organic Sewpur from another source and thought it was pretty good. Then I ordered it from Upton's and it did not seem the same or as good. I notice they have several different versions of Sewpur now. Let us know what you think.

I agree with you on Upton's, too many choices and not enough focus. They also have customer reviews on some teas, but none at all on many others. It seems like maybe they won't post reviews unless enough of them are positive. I did get a Ceylon from them that I liked. I intended to mix it with the Assams but it is also good by itself. I ordered three teas from TFactor today, hope they are good.

"Koucha," (could also be romanized as "kootya," for example) is the Japanese word for what we call black tea. I have *never* heard of black tea being produced in Japan (and Japan is my particular interest). Is it possible that that lot of tea was simply something produced for the Japanese market? They *do* drink a lot of black tea there, after all...

Interesting, I didn't know that they drank much black tea in Japan.

Just to make sure that my recollection was correct, I contacted Tfactor regarding the Koucha, which I would certainly recommend trying, BTW. The following is their prompt reply:

"Thank you for your enquiry. We still carry the Japanese black tea (Koucha). You can find the same here:

It is extremely hard to find a Japanese grower who is willing to offer their black tea production for exports. The grower primarily offers his black tea to his Japanese customers, and seems like he does brisk business within Japan.

Any other question, please let me know.

Kind Regards,

Saunam"

Actually, there are many teahouses in Japan that don't even carry Japanese green tea. They wouldn't serve much of it, since it is regarded as the tea "people have at home". Many Japanese like to go out and they like to try something less ordinary. Darjeeling teas seem to be popular because the name is familiar and famous, but many people actually don't like it when they try it. It is usually too week and most prefer the stronger blacks from Ceylon or Assam... Nigel is right: Time to overthrow our stereotypes...