Assam Tea Flushes: Spring, the Golden Summer Flush, Monsoon and Autumn

Assam grows low, at about 30 to 150 m, in heat of 20 to 30°C, so the large-leaf Assamica bushes grow fast. Summer gives more tea than spring, though less than the monsoon.

The bushes shape the season’s cup too. Dikom, for example, has nearly 70% of its bushes in high-quality clones such as P126A, N436, S3A3, T3A3, CP1 and Tenali 17, and Mangalam is planted entirely with clonal bushes at 42,480 bushes a hectare.

The gardens are also far from us. Our Assam partner estates sit about 400 to 900 km from our facility in Siliguri, from Doomni at 403.8 km to Namsang at 897.1 km, against 38 to 93 km for our Darjeeling gardens.

In Assam the first flush runs from March to April, after the winter pruning. In spring 2024, for the first time, we introduced two Assams in our spring range: Chardwar, from Tezpur district, and Dinjoye, “a robust, malty delight” from Dibrugarh district.

In 2026 our spring Assams were picked later than the house window: Dinjoye on 5 May and Chardwar on 29 and 30 May.

The spring of 2024, when those first two launched, was a dry one: Assam had 42% less rain than usual from March onward, and the North Bank gardens lost about 40% of their crop until May.

Our procurement team visited during the summer flush of 2015 and found Halmari collecting leaf in bamboo buckets to keep it from bruising, and Basmatia “famous for its golden tippy tea, Assam’s summer specialty.” That trip also took in Chubwa, Balijan, Hoogrijan, Zaloni, Rajgarh and Mankota; the name Chubwa comes from Chah Bowa, Assamese for “tea planting.”

“Every summer, we make our annual visit to Assam for the summer flush,” as Ravi Kothari of our procurement team wrote in 2017. As the summer samples arrive, “the cups are maltier, sweeter, and mellower” week by week.

How the summer builds

The rains decide when the summer teas peak. In 2023 useful rains in May let select estates in the prime belts of Jorhat, Moran, Dibrugarh and Tinsukia start making summer teas by early June, “the character’s yet to peak.” After the 2024 drought, our team expected quality “to peak with rich, malty characters emerging from June 20th onwards.”

Our summer buying then runs for months. In 2026 our Assam summer lots were picked from Halmari on 2 and 3 July to Dikom and Namsang on 19 to 21 September; in 2025 Dikom was picked on 29 and 30 August. Our summer partners include Halmari, Doomni, Mangalam, Dikom and Harmutty.

How we taste a summer flush

In July 2021 our tasters set the season’s samples out two ways. A horizontal tasting compared different gardens in the same season: Harmutty, Halmari, Mangalam, Doomni and Coombergram. A vertical one compared different clones from the same garden, sections of Halmari.

Two months later they tasted one Mangalam summer black at four oxidation times, from 2 hours 30 minutes (“muted”) to 3 hours 30 minutes, which they chose: “Let’s launch this!” The full trial is in How is tea made?, and the tea is our Assam Mangalam Gold Summer Black. Our Halmari Summer Black and Dikom Classic Summer Black come from the same season.

Assam’s autumn flush teas are lighter, with less body than summer’s, but the liquor is still bright and brisk; they are considered second best after the summer flush. After autumn the gardens rest.

Tea 101 puts the start of that rest in mid-December, when the estate enters a resting phase and, along with the pruning of the bushes, the factories see some overhauls. In Assam and the Dooars the bushes are pruned from the second half of January to the end of February, and there is no harvest at all.

Winter is hard work in the gardens all the same. At Balijan, field assistant Manisha Singh told us that in the cold months, when no harvest takes place, she is in the field by 4.30 to 5 am to oversee the pruning. More in Assam tea.