Why shopping for tea and coffee online is better than buying at a store
Picking tea leaves among green hills in Darjeeling or the Nilgiris has always been romanticised. The spectacle of women carrying conical cane baskets over their shoulders is not just a favoured photo op but also a role many tourists are tempted to play, even if only for a bit.
"Chai" is perhaps India's favourite drink, be it from stalls on the street or the colonial remnant - afternoon tea. But connoisseurs and enthusiasts who want more than the regular have to trot their way into obscure, fancy stores that sell beautifully packaged teas at exorbitant prices. Or succumb to the pressures of having to call any tea with Indian roots "chai tea". Translate it to one language out of the two and the phrase sounds plain ridiculous. Sadly, the best of Indian teas are usually exported. So where does a chai-lover go for genuine blends at genuine rates?
Online tea retailing has picked up just as well as shopping websites for clothes and shoes. Kaushal Dugar's Teabox, for instance, boasts a partnership with over a 100 tea estates across India and Nepal. The company has shipped teas to Chile, Argentina and even a British army officer serving in Iraq. It just goes to show how coveted Indian tea is, and, despite that, most people in India are content with regular Tata Tea or Lipton teabags for their daily morning fix. The option of alternating between a strong Assam and lighter Darjeeling black tea remains unexplored. Also, many rolled leaves of green, white and oolong teas never come close to being unfurled.
A significant difference in taste between regular packaged teas and specialty teas is evident, of course. Rohan Jahagirdar, senior marketing manager at Teabox, told me over a conversation: "The 200-year-old Indian tea industry relies on a large value chain consisting of multiple middlemen. This legacy value chain causes an inordinate delay in the time taken for it to reach the end consumer." Naturally, if it takes six to nine months for tea to reach an end consumer, the quality of the tea is likely to go down. Rohan explained that by circumventing the traditional value chain, and by connecting the growers directly with the consumers, Teabox is able to cut short the time to market from six to nine months, to five to six days.
This is what makes buying tea off Teabox or other websites more satisfactory than picking something off a shelf. But it's not just tea that's privileged enough to have websites dedicated to selling it. Kunal Ross has a similar vision in mind for The Indian Bean. The company believes that there is a dearth of Indian specialty coffee and non-blended coffees in India, and that we have been very used to drinking instant coffee. Just like Darjeeling tea, the taste of filter coffee is unknown to many Indians, except for those from the south. The Indian Bean employs free trade practices and sources coffee directly from farmers, which, again, makes freshness the priority.
I have walked into a Starbucks or a Costa and ended up disappointed with my cappuccino almost every time. Not that I am an expert at picking the perfect bean, but coffee at independent cafes almost always tastes better than something at a chain - especially the filter coffee at all-vegetarian south Indian restaurants.
It's far easier to order packs of tea and coffee with a few clicks on your laptop than it is to go out and deal with bitter tastings and pushy salespeople. And a great way educate yourself about the subtle differences between a first flush and second flush. You'll want to save the sediment of leaves/beans to whiff long after their flavour has been exhausted.
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