Second flush, explained in one cup
Darjeeling gets harvested in waves, and the waves have names. The first flush comes in spring and tastes light, grassy, and a little sharp, like opening a window in March. The second flush arrives in early summer, and it's a different animal entirely.
Between the two harvests, something odd happens in the gardens. Small leafhoppers graze on the young leaves, and the plant responds by producing compounds that, once oxidised, taste like muscat grapes and ripe stone fruit. Growers used to consider the insect damage a problem, right up until they tasted the tea it produced.
That muscatel character is why second flush Darjeeling costs what it costs, and why we bother batch-numbering it. It can't be manufactured. It needs the right insects in the right weeks of the right summer on the right hillside. Some years it barely shows up, and the good years get talked about for a decade.
Here's how to actually taste it. Brew a rounded teaspoon in water just off the boil, around 90°C, which in practice means a kettle left to stand for a minute. Give it three and a half minutes, and skip the milk for the first cup. You're looking for a grape-skin sweetness right at the end of the sip, after the malt fades. Once you've found it, you'll find it every time.
If your first cup tastes merely nice, brew the next one 30 seconds longer. Muscatel hides from timid brewing.
Our current second flush is from Kurseong, plucked in June. The batch number on your tin will tell you exactly which week.