Niraj de Mel with Cindi Bigelow, CEO of Bigelow Tea, and Prasanna Panabokke, the head taster at Van Rees Ceylon, Sri Lanka.
Niraj de Mel started working in the tea industry right after school. His 48-year career in tea began in 1977 as a tea auctioneer/ broker with Forbes & Walker Ltd., one of the oldest and leading tea broking firms. Five years later, he moved into tea buying, joining Heath & Company (Ceylon) Ltd. as a junior tea buyer and rapidly rising in the ranks to senior Tea buyer (Tea Manager). Briefly, Niraj was among the founding members of Mabroc Teas (Pvt.) Ltd. He then joined Bosanquet & Skrine Ltd. and became Tea Director within three months. He spent several years there, moving up to the position of managing director, which he held until 2001. When the company underwent a restructuring exercise for its tea export operations, Niraj was appointed as a director of the new entity, Gordon Frazer & Co. Ltd.
Around this time, a new government was elected in Sri Lanka (the end of 2001), introducing reforms to the tea sector. One of them was establishing the Tea Association of Sri Lanka to carry out new initiatives for the industry, including implementing a product certification standard for Ceylon Tea. Niraj was appointed as its first CEO in February 2003. Another change in government followed, and Niraj was appointed the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board in mid-2004. In November 2005, he resigned from the post.
In April 2006, he joined C.S. Asia Teas (Pvt.) Ltd. (part of the B.P. de Silva group, Singapore & Sri Lanka, which owns Tea Tang Ltd.) as the COO to market Indonesian teas. This was followed by a 5-year stint as Managing Director of VanRees Ceylon Ltd., whom he steered out of a debacle, bringing in much-needed stability. Niraj retired from here in 2012.
In retirement, he set up an exclusive Tea Café and a Tea Academy with the support and cooperation of his wife and children. The Mel’s Tea Academy, which opened in 2013, continues to offer short-term and long-term courses and special familiarization courses for foreigners.
Even in retirement, Niraj remains busy. He served as managing director of the Hayleys group of companies to help their newly set-up ” state-of-the-art” instant tea processing facility. He was key to bringing Martin Bauer GmbH, Germany, to partner with. He stepped down from the post in 2019 and continues to consult in tea tasting and sourcing.
In April 2022, he was appointed the Chairman of Ceylon Tea Brokers PLC, one of the country’s 8 licensed leading tea brokers. This coincided with the economic downturn in Sri Lanka, which led to the resignation of the then-elected president. The tea industry unanimously urged the then Minister in charge of the Plantations to appoint Niraj as the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board for the second time, a position he held until late September 2024.
When did you decide to pursue tea making/tea tasting as a professional skill? What first interested you about tasting?
From my younger days, I had a love for tea gardens and the smell of tea. I would dream of spending time in tea estates and being among the tea bushes. My uncle had a tea property and we spent holidays there when I was young. Later, I had the privilege of spending time in a tea estate, where we met a tea maker’s son. I stayed in their house, surrounded by tea, directly in front of the factory. When I was a bit older, I accompanied my uncle, and we stayed at the guest bungalow at the Tea Research Institute, which was surrounded by tea bushes and the tea factory.
However, my dream was to be an accountant throughout my school years, particularly during my secondary education. I wanted to complete a degree at the Institute of Cost Management Accountants UK. While at school, I was given many leadership opportunities, including head prefect. One of my duties was distributing the notifications the principal wanted distributed among the children. One day, there was a notification from a tea company calling for interested students to join as trainee tea tasters. And because I had this love for tea, I thought, this is an opportunity where I can do something I am interested in, and through which I can get the funding I need for my accountancy — which required a lot of money that my parents could not afford. So, I went back to the principal and requested that he send my name.
He said, “No, you’re going to the university. You are university material. You have to go there.”
I replied, “Well, that’s not my line of tertiary education. I desire to be an accountant, and I am focusing on doing accountancy at the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants.”
I added that my parents couldn’t afford that kind of fee, and by starting to work—and also because I am quite enamoured with becoming a tea taster—I will be able to fund my education through my salary.
With this, he agreed to send my name. That was the start.
On 1st May 1977, after my final attempt at the A levels, I started work at Forbes and Walker tea brokers in Sri Lanka. They were one of the oldest and leading tea broking companies at that time. Even today, I’m proud to say they are a leading tea broking company one of eight licensed by the tea board.
I love the day I walked into Forbes and Walker. Going through one of the corridors, the smell of tea was exactly what I had experienced throughout my growing days.
I had a very successful training period, which was reduced to something like six months, or less than six months, and I was absorbed as a permanent employee of the company. As an auctioneer broker, I was selling the tea catalogue at the auctions. Within three years, by 1980, I was selling the prime catalogue, which is called the Ex-Estate catalogue, which had all the top-end teas, the top grades that get the highest prices from all the tea estates. That gave me, at a very young age, an opportunity to interact with some of the father figures in the tea industry at that time.
Five years later, in 1982, I was offered a job at a tea export company, which was the single largest supplier to Tetley UK. Back then, it was Lyons Tetley Ltd.; today, it is Tata Tetley. This job opened up wider horizons of tea tasting. When I was in the tea broking company, I would only taste the teas sold by Forbes and Walker. But going into a tea export company, I could see all the teas offered at the auctions by all the brokers. So there, I grew quite rapidly.
In 1984, I trained at Lyons Tetley in the UK for three weeks and spent one week at R. Twinings, a 300+ year-old company for whom we were a minor supplier. I was exposed to foreign teas. I tasted with the tea tasters of Tetley and learned about teas from Africa, North India, South India, Indonesia, and so forth. So, a desire for that diversity, that variety, really kept me going.
I stopped pursuing my accounting course when my older daughter was born. Work in tea took centre stage over my desire to be an accountant. Later, I started doing a marketing course but did not complete it. I’m a half-baked accountant and a half-baked marketer. But I must tell you what I gathered from accountancy, particularly the organizational aspects as well as cost and financial accounting helped me a lot in the companies I worked. Marketing helped me hold a conversation wherever I went to promote the Sri Lankan tea brand. So, all three put together have helped me immensely to come this far in life.
Are there some tea styles that resonate with you? Are there some teas you felt better at describing, even if they’re not your favorite?
At my first job, we would start with the catalogue that sold dust grades, which are liked by this part of the world—the SAARC countries (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and the Maldives make up the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). That’s where I started to sell. What I sold, I had to taste and know its qualities so that buyers wouldn’t buy it cheap.
When you are concentrating on one particular tea grade, that’s your favourite for that period. And then when you move on, you like the next lot. I started with dust, and then I moved on to broken grades, Broken Orange Pekoe, and Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings. Then I moved on to selling some of the leafy grades, progressing further. At that time, the high-grown estates were considered the ‘bourgeois,’ that companies like Lipton, Harrisons, etc., the top Western companies, were buying. Selling that catalogue was the dream. Normally, it was the company’s directors who would sell this catalogue, as they would hobnob with people at that level in the buying companies. At a very young age of 22, I was able to sell that catalogue.
Where Ceylon tea is concerned, I love all the grades manufactured in this country, provided they are well-made and offer the consumer the satisfaction of a nice cup of tea.
If I get down to specifics, I like what they call in China needle tea, our Orange Pekoe 1. It’s a very wiry needle style coming from the low-growns. It has a beautiful caramel-ly taste, is a darling of Saudi Arabia, and even some of the Western countries. Then there are the tippy grades. They taste very nice and fresh in your mouth because tips are obtained from the early stages of the rolling process, from the first and second dhools, as we call it.
By and large, I would like my tea tasting to be associated with something very delicate, where the notes and characters come through well, either a nutty note, a caramel note, or a floral note. I love to associate those teas with my tasting experience.
But as a cup of tea, we are Asians and South Asians. We love to have a strong cup of tea, which we can drink with milk. We like that cup of tea because that’s what really makes the day.
Which teas were initially the most challenging for you, and how did you make your peace with them and reach an understanding with them?
In my initial 2-3 years, I was a little disappointed that I could not identify different characters of the tea apart from saying, “This is a nice tea with a really good quality, a high level of quality, or that this tea is strong, and this tea is weak.” I was able to identify them, but only in the broader categories.
Back then, we looked for the negatives; that’s how the Britishers had trained us tea tasters over the years. We looked for a tea with few defects in manufacturing or in the field. If you pluck badly, you will end up with a tea that is not going to taste very good. Tea is highly hygroscopic and absorbs every odor. If there’s a lorry giving off a lot of smoke, and if it’s close to where the teas are packed, the tea will absorb it. Inside the factory, the defects can come when tea is under-fermented or over-fermented, or in the drying process, if it’s overfired. Identifying these characteristics, particularly the smoky character, was a little difficult to identify in the initial years.
I learned on the job, and let me be very honest, most of the senior people with whom I worked in different companies were not very open to teaching. We would stand behind them at the tasting. So, as they moved on from cup to cup, I would quickly take notes and later get the tea boy to rebrew the tea so that I could identify what they had noted and to see what that meant. I’m also quite good at eavesdropping, so I would listen to conversations and pick up a lot of things that were not taught.
When I moved into the tea-buying fraternity, the export sector, and started tasting many teas, it gave me the opportunity to identify those characteristics. So, it’s not an overnight thing. I tell my students not to get disappointed if they don’t identify the finer characters within their first five years. It takes a minimum of five years to understand and be able to identify the different characters.
When I started exporting tea to Japan, I learnt that they don’t taste the colonial way. Because of the colonial influence, we look at the tea leaf, then we have the tea brewed, and the spent leaf is put on the inverted side of the lid of the cup. We look at the infusion, and then you go look at the cup color that’s in the bowl, and we taste and identify the different characteristics. The Japanese would weigh the tea into the bowl and pour hot water over it. They would then come around nosing it and choose teas they thought nosed well – those that had a lovely aroma, and thereafter they would get it straight into the cups. Nine out of ten times, their choices were perfect.
That always reminded me of our planters who, on particularly very dry, cold nights, would wake up at 2 or 2.30 in the morning, after a late night at the club. They would go to the factory and, standing there, would “nose” the smell and tell the tea maker, say, today cut down fermentation by half an hour or one hour. And when the tea was made and tasted the next morning, it would be a winner. The tea maker does a lot of things with gut feel. There is no scientific apparatus to measure and decide where to stop the fermentation.
Tea tasting is basically organoleptic, where you use your five senses—touch, feel, smell, taste, and sight. For example, tea grades with very well-rolled leaves, like a Shotty Pekoe, as we call it, have to make a noise when you drop it onto the tray. If it produces the tuk-tuk-tuk noise, it means it’s very well rolled.
Until I retired, I would taste 500-1,000 cups per week, depending on the crop situation. During the Uva quality season, our lunch would be ruined because the tongue is coated with this balmy/pungent character that the Uva teas bring out, as a result of the methyl salicylate in the tea. In the same way, the linalool in the Dimbula teas during their season is very pronounced and also affects your tongue, but it’s not as bad as the methyl salicylate in the Uvas. Then, of course, you have the geraniol, a floral character that comes from the Nuwara Eliyas that leaves a lovely feeling, very delicate, and lasts for a short time.
Will you share some insights with readers about how you developed your tea vocabulary?
I used to read a lot, particularly newspaper articles, and I would pick up words that I linked to tea. I’m humble enough to add that I listen when people speak and pick up words and phrases that have been added to my tea vocabulary. Today, when I teach, I have to speak in today’s language, use expressions that today’s young people can understand
I use a Tea Research Institute (TRI) handbook that lists descriptions for the leaf, the infused leaf, and the brew itself. For example, a brew may be described as “meaty” or “strong.” Meaty was an Englishman’s term denoting the tea is strong like meat. It’s so strong. It indicates a tea that is good to be drunk with milk.
As stated in the TRI handbook I referred to earlier, most of those character descriptions used by tea tasters of yesteryear are rarely used today. This is a result of standardization and consolidation due to the way teas are currently sold in international supermarkets. My advice to tea lovers and budding tea tasters is to draw parallels with the normal tastes of food one usually consumes with the different cups of tea one would taste. For example, lime drink is sour. Sour notes are common in certain teas. Should a tea taste the same as a food taste you are familiar with, make a mental note of it and use that description in your tea tasting sessions. It is also essential to differentiate the variety of notes or hints one may experience when tasting a cup of tea. Link it with whatever taste you are familiar with. It can be a berry or a citrusy note, a minty or chocolate hint. When you describe in such manner, you relate to today’s consumer specially those youngsters. Wines and coffee are described in that way and that’s probably why they are hot sellers.
What advice would you give consumers seeking to refine their taste in tea?
In the process of refinement, you need to, first and foremost, be patient. You can’t expect to have a cup of water to which you’re adding a tea bag and believe that’s going to give you the satisfaction that you’re looking for. If you really want it to titillate your palate and leave an aftertaste even while you’re walking away, then you must be patient.
You need to pay up and go after good quality standards of tea. To recognise good tea, you need to gather tea literature. I am amazed at how much literature people have gathered on wines, coffee, and even whiskies. I do not see the same thing for tea. This requires producing countries to do targeted promotions on tea.
I would say tea bags have taken away that experience of really brewing tea and tasting. The enjoyment is confined to just having a cup of tea – quench your thirst, feel rejuvenated. In the case of wines, we talk about the difference between Chilean wine and South African wine or champagne from Bordeaux. But in tea, it’s become just a cup of tea. Which is taking away the whole experience that one would get from it. With a long leaf tea that is well rolled, when the hot water is poured to brew, it opens and gives that much of the tea solubles into the cup. So, a tea that is rolled and not macerated tea, for example, will give you the flavour and fragrance you’re looking for. But if it’s macerated… it’s like minced beef compared to beef steak, right? Loads of colour but little aroma or fragrance.
One recommended reading is Will Battle’s World Tea Encyclopaedia. It has helped me a lot. The tea wheel can help a beginner understand which types of teas are citrusy, which are more woody, and things like that—that’s a good start. He talks of the different teas by country. He has covered the whole globe, basically wherever tea is grown, and has taken great pains in describing their different characteristics.
A lot of education is required for the consumer. I don’t see that happening for tea. Sadly, all of us have failed. All producing countries have failed in that area, except perhaps China.
What is your advice to budding tasters?
You need to taste and taste because there are many similarities. But when you keep on tasting, you will begin to identify the differences, and that’s how you broaden your horizons.
You need to taste as much as you can and visually observe the different tea leaves. What does the leaf look like? You must look at the one in the middle—the tea infusion; that will give you insights into how the tea was manufactured. This is going back to basics.
You need to know about tea, from growing to manufacturing, and how teas are sold and marketed. The tea taster should be able to identify tea grades and the different characteristics of tea.
You should also be able to do blends. Lots of teas sold in the world today, whether you like it or not, are blends. This is because tea is directly related to weather — any agricultural commodity is — but in tea, weather can play a crucial part in either making or breaking the tea. If you confine yourself to a one particular estate, you may be disappointed along the way. On a day that has been gloomy and bad, the tea from that estate may not be as enjoyable as on another occasion. Blends ensure consistency of the standard, so the consumer is not disappointed. No customer complaints, right?
Nuwara Eliya Broken Orange Pekoe (BOP)
Tea Type: Black oxidized tea from fine pluck in Spring (Feb – Apr)
Dry Leaves: Medium-sized tea grade. Gentle, orthodox manufacturing style. Attractive mixture of relatively black and brownish leaves. Lightly rolled with shorter oxidation to extract the unique flavor.
Infused leaf: A mix of light orange and greenish small particles of ‘open’ leaf indicative of the reduced fermentation with a floral ‘nose’ giving out a Gardenia fragrance.
In-cup colour: This is a very delicate light liquor, denoting its very high elevation.
Aroma: It has a floral aroma, which I really relish.
Body: Although delicate in character, has sufficient body to enhance the floral fragrance.
Flavour: A mixture of aromatic pine and citrusy taste.
Preparation: 2.5 gm per 140 ml of freshly drawn water
Brewing time: 5 minutes
Brewing temperature: 100 °C.
Dimbula Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings (BOPF)
Tea Type: Black oxidized tea finely picked throughout the year
Dry Leaves: Small, even blackish appearance with a brownish tinge.
Infused leaf: Bright red evenly spread
In-cup colour: It has a nice cup colour and is our usual day-to-day drink. I really like Dimbula tea mainly because it liquors well with milk. It’s got a nice reddish glow in the cup and is strong enough to take milk. That’s the cup of tea I particularly enjoy in the afternoon or evening.
Aroma: Beautiful fragrance emanating from a tea garden
Body: Heavy and strong
Flavour : A pungent brisk character, a tea for all year round
Preparation: 2.5 g per 140 ml of freshly drawn water
Brewing time: 5 minutes
Brewing temperature: 100 °C.
Low Grown Orange Pekoe 1 (OP1)
Tea Type: Black oxidized tea finely plucked all year round
Dry Leaves: A fairly large size tea grade (‘whole leaf’ in industry parlance). Traditionally orthodox manufacturing style. Attractive black leaves uniformly wiry and stylishly twisted. It is rolled harder and oxidized longer
Infused leaf: Brightly unfurled and beautifully unfolded, brownish shoots are faithful to the leaf grade
In-cup colour: Little browner, denoting that it’s a typical Sri Lankan low-grown but fairly light
Aroma: Similar to a freshly baked cake
Body: Brisk and full in the mouth.
Flavour: I enjoy the taste mostly because of its beautiful caramel hint and slightly bakey character. Overall, it has a beautiful mouthfeel. This is why the Saudi Arabians love a Sri Lankan OP 1 grade and pay a premium.
Preparation: 2.5 g per 140 ml of freshly drawn water
Brewing time: 5 minutes
Brewing temperature: 100 °C
