The Hindu Business Line : 213 entries for screening at UPASI tea competition

Coimbatore, Feb 3 A 8-member jury representing major tea packeteers, exporters and brokers commenced the tea tasting exercise at the United Planters Association of Southern India (UPASI) conference hall on Saturday to pick the possible ‘award’ grades for the second and final round.

National-level screening

There were 213 entries (grades) at this national-level screening and the connoisseurs, donning an apron with the TGLIA (The Golden Leaf India Awards Southern Tea Competition – 2008) logo went around the hall looking at the samples kept in porcelain cups before making the brew and tasting it.

The samples, UPASI sources said, were drawn from the back-up quantities by the UPASI Tea Research Institute scientists. Six samples were collected for each entry. These samples were sealed, coded and recoded by the Director, UPASI Tea Research Foundation to ensure total confidentiality.

back-up quantity

A back-up quantity of 150 kg for organic leaf grades, 250 kg for orthodox leaf grades and green tea leaf grades and 500 kg for all other categories were a pre-requisite to ensure that these represent a commercially viable critical mass, as different from specialty teas.

Quality attributes

The evaluation, sources said, would be based on a scoring methodology which assigns scores on a scale of 0-10 for the various quality attributes such as dry leaf appearance, infused or spent leaf appearance, liquor attributes such as colour, aroma, briskness and strength.

The teas qualifying the first level of screening would be screened for pesticide residue parameters and heavy metals in the next round. The tea tasting exercise went on for more than 4 hours. The jury is expected to announce the scores in a day or two. According to the Tea Board Executive Director, Mr R.D. Nazeem, TGLIA, generated intense competition among the six tea growing regions to produce quality teas. It has also helped overcome the poor/negative perception about South Indian teas.

Mr N. Dharmaraj, Convenor, Organising Committee said the leading packers in the world were beginning to evaluate their tea purchases objectively. ‘It is not biased by ‘origin’ but more on the basis of ‘intrinsic value for money platform’, he added.

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213 entries for screening at UPASI tea competition