Rs 50,000 kg, the auction price of Assam’s rare Manohari Gold tea

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In what is being claimed as the highest price ever paid for tea in a public auction, a kilogram of Manohari Gold Tea from a garden in Assam sold for Rs 50,000 at the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre on Tuesday morning.

Last year, a kilogram of the same tea was sold for Rs 39,001, a record which was soon broken by Golden Needle variety from the Donyi Polo Tea Estate in Arunachal Pradesh which sold for Rs 40,000 a kilo.

“The price that Manohari Gold has fetched is the highest for tea in a public auction,” claimed Dinesh Bihani, Secretary, Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers Association.

Rajan Lohia, owner of the Manohari Tea Estate in Dibrugarh in Upper Assam explained how this year only around five kilograms of the exquisite specialty orthodox tea was produced.

“The weather was not very supportive,” he said. The gold tea is made from small buds, and not the tea leaves, in what Lohia claimed was a tedious and difficult process. “It is made from the finest clones, the P-126 which is said to be the best clone,” said Lohia. He said the buds are plucked early morning in the second flush season in May and June.

Manjilal Maheshwari of the Sourabh Tea Traders bid the highest price in the Tuesday morning auction.

Maheshwari had bought 2 kilograms of Manohari Gold tea in 2018, too. “A seller who purchased a kilogram liked it very much and had asked me to keep an eye out when the tea hits the market again,” Maheshwari said, adding that he retailed the remaining tea at a whopping price of Rs 8,000 per 100 grams.