Assam Orthodox Tea

TGFOP & FTGFOP whole leaf — tippy, malty, loose-leaf grade

Orthodox manufacture rolls withered leaf gently to bruise rather than shred it, keeping the leaf largely intact and producing a slower, more layered infusion than CTC. Grades read as an acronym ladder describing leaf size and tip content: OP (Orange Pekoe) is whole leaf without much tip, FOP adds tip, GFOP golden tip, TGFOP tippy golden, and FTGFOP finest tippy golden — with a trailing 1 marking the better lot within a grade. Tip, the downy unopened bud, is what those letters are counting, and in Assam it appears as bright golden flecks through a dark leaf. Broken orthodox grades (BOP) and fannings (BOPF) sit below the whole-leaf grades and brew faster. The cup keeps Assam's malt but reads lighter and more aromatic than CTC, with the second flush again the year's benchmark.

Buy orthodox Assam when the leaf will be seen or the cup assessed: loose-leaf retail in caddies and clear packs, premium pyramid teabags where whole leaf is the selling point, speciality and hotel service, and single-estate programmes. It costs substantially more than CTC from the same district, and the honest reason is yield and labour rather than a better plant — orthodox rolling produces less saleable tea per kilo of green leaf and takes longer. That premium buys appearance and nuance. If the tea is going into a paper teabag where nobody sees the leaf and the brew must be strong in ninety seconds, CTC does that job better and cheaper, and paying orthodox money for it is waste. CBIL brokers orthodox Assam against garden mark, grade, tip content, taster assessment, moisture and ISO 3720 parameters, on FOB Kolkata, CFR and CIF terms.