White tea being made in Tripura: 50000rs per kg

Bindusmita Bhowmik

This time white tea was produced experimentally in Tripura. Success has come primarily in this highly expensive and medicinal product.

Its production cost is higher than ordinary tea. The process is also much more complicated.

Gopal Chakraborty, a small tea farmer in the Durgabari area around Agartala, has recently experimentally produced a small amount of white tea.

These tea leaves are not completely black in appearance, but gray-black in color. The tea leaves are much longer and sticky.

Gopal Chakraborty mainly produces organic green tea. Her handmade organic green tea is famous in various states of India including Tripura. Even the hand-made green tea produced by him was collected and taken away by people from different countries besides India.

He told our reporter that the buds of the tea leaves were collected for the white tea. The leaf buds have to be collected before the matching leaf shape. The raw leaves are not completely green. So when they are processed, they are long in size and gray in color. The color of the tea is light greenish. Not so much the color. That is why it is called White Tea.

‘No matter how much tea is put on the leaves and as long as it is boiled, the color will not be more than that. This is because the leaves are not completely green when collected from the tree, so they will not change color if desired. ’

He said not anyone can collect leaves for White Tea. Experienced collectors are required to collect these leaves. The taste is lighter than green tea. And if you drink this tea, you can sleep properly.

It is possible to collect a maximum of 5 kg of raw leaves per week from one hectare of tea garden with which 1 kg of dried white tea leaves are made. It is completely organic as it is made by hand.

It is possible to collect 365 kg of raw leaves in one week from one hectare of land for making ordinary tea and by processing these raw leaves, 80 kg of dried tea leaves are produced. The wholesale selling price of this amount of leaves is around 15 thousand rupees.

On the other hand, one kg of white tea is sold for 40 to 50 thousand rupees. This type of expensive tea is mainly made by hand. Which is extremely hard work. From picking the leaves to processing the tea and drying it, if you move it a little, there will be no color or taste. This requires special training.

When Gopal Chakraborty was training handmade tea leaves from the Tea Board of India, he was also trained to make white tea.

What is the demand for such expensive tea, will commercial production be successful at all? Asked about this, he said that although there is no demand for this tea in the state of Tripura, there is a demand for these teas in different states of India and abroad. Considering all aspects, I will start commercial production of white tea, especially if I find wholesale buyers in foreign countries.

(Writer is a Agartala based journalist working for Indigenousherald)

January 15 2021

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