Woolah tea from Assam claims to be the world’s first ‘bagless’ dip tea, and an organic one at that. Simply put, it is a compressed bunch of eti koli duti paat (one bud and two leaves) bound by a string. Woolah is the Assamese word for happiness. Clearly, the founders believe the right cup of tea — green, white or black tea— gives immense happiness.
Hailing from Sibsagar in Upper Assam, Woolah founders, Upamanyu Borkotoky and Ansuman Bharali, initially, had no idea about tea market or cultivation. On one of their annual visits home, they heard a farmer requesting the shopkeeper at a tea shop to sell his organic hand-rolled tea to regular customers.
Upamanyu and Ansuman Bharaliu, co-founders of Woolah tea from Assam | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Upamanyu didn’t give much thought to it then. However, he bought some leaves and was quite surprised when he found that the green tea tasted good. Upamanyu said, “A strong notion I had that green teas cannot be enjoyed, began to fade. Then I came back to Delhi and my corporate life.”
Later, he and Ansuman gave up their cushy jobs in the corporate sector to challenge themselves. Upamanyu explains, “I realised that as I climbed up the brand marketing ladder, I had a lot of luxuries around me, except the luxury of a peaceful mind. I was working to build a brand that wasn’t even mine.”
Back in Assam, they entered the business of lens manufacturing but found themselves at sea because the market in Upper Assam was raw and procuring raw materials was a task. So they thought it would be a good idea to also explore working on something that was available in Assam. “That was petroleum and tea. Petroleum was out of bounds. Tea was all over the place but still had some scope. Also, we didn’t want to do what others were doing,” recalls Upamanyu.
They wanted to focus on a speciality tea, the kind of tea that usually gets exported. However, speciality tea was usually meant for tea connoisseurs in the domestic market.
While researching different kinds of tea, they came across a study by McGill University about microplastics and nanoplastics released from a tea bag into the tea. Intrigued, they started digging deeper. Anshuman adds “We finally realised that most tea bags have hardly any tea; they have tea dust with a minimal amount of tea leaves.”
The duo started working with tea in 2016, choosing to begin with identifying tea cultivators rather than the market. “We were sure about organic tea. Sibsagar and nearby places such as Kaxhopothar and Dibrugarh had quite a few organic tea farmers. They had got into organic farming after they realised how pesticides were having an adverse effect on them and the life of their livestock. Tea farmers usually live close to the tea plantations or inside it. So they experienced the effect of the pesticides first-hand. As we spoke to them, we realised that they were going back to the farming methods followed by their grandfathers,” explains Upamanyu.
Once in hot water, the compressed tea leaves by Woolah tea opens up | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Next, their task was to convince the farmers to sell them their tea. The farmers were more than happy once the duo offered them three times the market price; that was an incentive to continue with organic tea. “From 2016 to 2020 we spent a lot of time learning, researching and thinking of the right way to introduce speciality Assam tea. We finally went to China to learn about tea processing; We were astounded by what we saw and learnt there,” adds Anshuman.
In China, they saw that a lot of the speciality teas followed the traditional method. The practises adopted by speciality tea companies involves less breakage of leaves and minimal processing. When tea leaves go through minimal processing, they do not break.
What prevents Woolah ‘bagless’ tea from breaking when it is dipped in hot water to make tea? “Tea leaves becomes brittle when it is heavily processed. We follow the traditional tea crafting methods in speciality tea-making, which involves minimal processing. After being processed we compress the tea leaves into a marble sized ball. Minimal processing that is used in tea crafting not only ensures quality and prevents breakage. Breakage spoils quality. Whin in turn helps retain tea’s aroma, taste and colour along with its properties like Polyhenols etc,” explains Upamanyu.
So how does one brew the bagless dip tea? Remove it from the cover, dip in a cup of hot water and see the tea leaves unruffle, just like a blooming flower tea. Keep it in the cup for desired strength and colour and sip,” explained Upamanyu.
