A rare golden special tea produced in Manohari Tea Estate in eastern Assam's Dibrugarh district was sold at Rs. 99,999 per kg in Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) on Tuesday, breaking its earlier record of Rs. 75,000 per kg clocked in October last year.
The tea, named as "Manohari Gold" was bought by Saurav Tea Traders, a Guwahati-based tea trading company. Only one kg of the special tea was auctioned on Tuesday.
"We are delighted that Manohari Gold has broken all records of teas sold at GTAC. Manohari Gold has broken the record of auction prices and created history for the fourth time in a row since 2018. This is the costliest tea in the world as on today," director of Manohari Tea Estate, Rajan Lohia told DH.
"This is a rare tea, which is produced from finest clones. This is produced in limited quantity and was produced based on demand. The leaves are Sun dried and and are produced only once in a year. The tea is bright golden in colour with soothing after taste and health benefits," Lohia said.
"The record price it fetched is something which will help the Assam tea industry going through crisis situation for years," he said.
The tea will be available at GTAC tea lounge and will also be sold online.
Manohari Gold was sold at Rs. 75,000 per kg in October 2020. The golden butterfly tea produced in Dikom Tea Estate in upper Assam was also sold at Rs. 75,000 per kg in August 2019. In 2018, Manohari gold tea was sold at Rs. 39,001 and later at Rs. 50,000 per kg too in the auction.
With over 850 big tea gardens, Assam is the world's largest tea growing region and contributes over 52% of total tea production in the country. But stagant prices since 2014, adverse climatic condition and increase in production cost haa left the industry players into a crisis.
"This is a proud moment for all of us in the GTAC.We hope that the foreign buyers will also like these Indian speciality teas and I urge more and more sellers to come up with speciality tea and make India a hub for speciality teas, said Dinesh Bihani, secretary of Guwahati Tea Auction Buyers Association.
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