Darjeeling First Flush is a lightly fermented black tea. It is harvested in early spring. We are particularly selecting the tea with a bright flavor and reasonable aftertaste.

When talk about black tea, people may associate it with the common milk tea served in food store. This Darjeeling Black Tea is totally not like those used for milk tea. The taste of Darjeeling First Flush is like quality white tea or refreshing Taiwan high mountain oolong tea. It is suitable for morning and evening.

This first flush tea is from Gopaldhara tea garden. It has a multi-layers of floral note with a hint of honey-like finishing.

When brew, the color of tea leaf is yellowish green color, with a honey-yellow liquor. It's a refreshing cup of tea to start a day or to rejuvenate our body during anytime in a day. It's a tea to enjoy without milk or sugar. It has a lingering sweetish taste on palate.

We noticed that there are people who might judge the quality of Darjeeling tea by the name of tea gardens. In India, tea gardens belong to very big companies. In general, one tea garden covers a wide range of the mountain. From the same tea garden, there will be many different lots of tea. Each lot represents a particular production date, and it is produced from one small area of the tea garden.

So, in reality, the quality of tea varies a lot depending on the particular area of the tea garden, the altitude and also the process.

Tea liquor is honey yellow. It hard to believe it’s a black tea It is very important for us to conduct tastings to evaluate each lot of tea.
When we select tea, we emphasize a lot on the aftertaste and the body. It is just like wine or brandy. The quality drink has a strong aftertaste and the flavor lasts for a long time on the palate.It is not necessary that DJ-1 is the best quality

The DJ number is the lot number set according to the production date. So, DJ-1 is supposed to be the first lot in their production in the spring season of the year. In Japan, if we visit a fancy tea shop, they are treating DJ-1 as a premium lot, and this batch often commands a premium selling price too. But DJ-1 is not necessarily the best quality.

The price of the first lot of Darjeeling First Flush (DJ-1) is high.Therefore many people think that DJ-1 (the first lot of tea picked in the season in Darjeeling tea gardens) is the best.

The actual fact is the harvest of tea begins earlier at low elevation and slowly moves on to higher elevation. So, the beginning of DJ number is representing the tea harvested at lower elevation.

HOJO doesn't select tea by the DJ numbers. We carefully evaluate each lot and choose the ideal quality according to our own quality standard.