This article has also appeared in the last issue of The Tea Times
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Green Tea – have we found the right type for the Indian/Western consumer ?
In a country that consumes over 800 million Kgs of tea, there is virtually NO consumption of Green tea.
The past decade has seen some changes that are affecting the consumption pattern of tea in India:
i) Increase in the consumption of Orthodox.
ii) Rise in Darjeeling tea consumption.
iii) The interest/enquiry in Organic teas has increased tremendously, and there is a dramatic increase in the demand of these teas. This is a segment that will grow (as a percent of increase in consumption) many times more than demand for other teas.
iv) Health benefits of tea are being discussed across the higher-end segments and that is where the awareness of Organic teas’ added benefits are taking place.
v) This has also increased the discussion of Green tea’s health benefits.
But in spite of this shift, Green Tea consumption has increased only marginally. So I started looking at the reasons for why the consumer in India was not taking to Green Tea ? The best place to start was myself (I am possibly the highest consumer of tea in the world – between 2500 to 2900 ltrs of tea in a year and doing so for almost 4 decades. (Thank God I am in the tea industry…) Because of the pesticide load that I carry over this heavy consumption for 36 years, I now drink mainly Organic tea – Green, Orthodox, Darjeeling, Oolongs & CTC (with Milk + sugar). Why did I take to Green tea only very recently? That is where I began looking for the answer.
This lead me to some high-end consumers of flavoury orthodox (including Darjeeling) teas that are drunk without milk and sugar. What came out across most of the consumers in India was that they did not like the ‘fishy smell’ that most of the green teas have. However, the consumers in Eastern Asia are actually very fond of that particular characteristic of green tea, and would not have it otherwise.
So I worked at identifying what contributed to that ‘fishy flavour’ in the manufacture of green teas. After having found the reason we managed to reduce this flavour and even eliminate it, by making small changes to the processing parameters (yet keeping the steaming process). When the same consumers were given this Green Tea they preferred it to the earlier one and some of them have started developing a taste for these teas.
I then looked at some Western European consumers and gave them the two different teas and they too preferred the new Green Teas. This confirmed the consumer preference in India and the western world, and explained, to some extent, as to why the growth of Green Tea was not much in these areas.
Now we are seeing a lot of growth in the demand for these Green Teas. I also got some Green Teas manufactured in this manner in Indonesia and these too have been very well received. Suddenly the high end consumer and the health conscious consumer is finding a tea that is very healthy and that he likes the taste of. And I have replaced 7 to 10 cups, out of my daily intake of black teas, with Green Tea.
Harki Sidhu
