In my previous tea post, I talked about the San-Cha Darjeeling tea that I had bought on my trip to India (all the way back in July). But after writing it, I realised that I still had a few packets of the Darjeeling tea by Chayurveda – this was part of a box of various types individually packeted teabags that I had bought to give as omiyage of my trip. So I decided to compare the two and see how different they could be.

Both teas were bought at the same location (in the duty free area), so I clearly didn’t go into the purchase with a lot of research and intent. But I remember the Chayurveda was significantly cheaper than the San-Cha so I was interested to see if there was a significant difference.

Spoiler: there was.

For the first cup, I steeped the leaves for both teas for 45 seconds. The tea bag tea may arguably have an advantage with shorter steeping times, and teabag teas tend to be made for quick steeps (and may be broken into smaller pieces) but the loose leaf tea was already quite fine so I didn’t think the difference would be that great. Well, the tea bag tea (Chayurveda) had a malty and sweet scent and tasted pretty robust – sweet and malty. It was a great first impression, actually, though I might not have thought it was Darjeeling if I was looking for something with a refined character (which is the impression I have of Darjeeling from all the talk about it). The loose leaf (San-Cha), on the other hand, was a lot more subdued. It was slightly sweet but my impression was that the tea was still holding a lot back. If the Chayurveda is a friendly tea with its flavours coming out clearly from the start, then San-Cha is shy.

The second cup used a 1 minute steep and both teas turned out to be stronger compared to the first cup. The Chayurveda started reminding me of a good English breakfast, which is strong, sweet, and malty, generally a punchy tea to start the day with. I was itching to add milk to this tea. The San Cha tea was deeper in colour compared to the first cup and was sweet and woody with no bitterness.

In the end, I managed to steep the Chayurveda three times and the Sancha four times, which made for a lot of tea for one morning. I feel that the San Cha takes more time for the notes to come out but there is a development in how the tea tastes over the various cups, while the Chayurveda is more consistent throughout the whole tea session. As to which is more representative of Darjeeling, I cannot really say yet – I suppose I’d need to drink more Darjeeling to understand what I should be expecting from this tea region when I pick it up.