Second Flush
Second flush is the early-summer picking on the Indian and Nepali estates, and in both Darjeeling and Assam it is the prized one. It is the source of Darjeeling's muscatel character and of Assam's malt, and it is the clearest case in tea of a later picking being worth more than the first.
- Window
- May and June
- Vocabulary
- Indian and Nepali estates
- Growth
- Warm and quickening
- Cup
- Muscatel or malt, full body
The tea year
Typical windows, not dates. Every one of these moves with the weather, the latitude and the year: the pages say by how much.
What it is
The second wave of new shoots, taken after the first flush has been harvested and the bush has regrown. In Darjeeling it produces the district's most valuable lots; in Assam it produces the tippy, malty tea that most people picture when they think of Assam at all. The same word therefore points at two quite different results, joined only by both being the round that their region considers its best.
When it happens
May and June, between the spring flush and the arrival of the monsoon. The monsoon closes it, which is the substantive boundary: once heavy rain sets in, growth becomes fast and dilute and the resulting monsoon-flush tea is the year's cheapest. The second flush is the last picking before that happens.
What it does to the leaf
Warmth and stronger light mean more catechins and a fuller-bodied leaf than the first flush, and greater oxidation is usually taken in processing, so the tea is a properly red black tea rather than a pale one. Darjeeling's muscatel character has a more specific cause: a small leafhopper, Empoasca, feeds on the shoots at this time of year, and the plant's wound response alters the leaf chemistry in a way that produces the grape-like aroma. The insect damage is not tolerated, it is the point, and gardens that spray it away lose the character they are selling.
What it tastes like
In Darjeeling, full and round with the distinctive muscatel note, a sweet grapey aroma over a firmer body and an amber liquor, far more substantial than the first flush. In Assam, malty, brisk and heavy, with golden tips and the strength that makes it the classic breakfast base. Both are unambiguously black tea in a way a Darjeeling first flush is not.
How to read it on a label
As with first flush, the meaningful version comes with a garden name, a grade and an invoice number, and the meaningless version is the phrase alone on a supermarket box. Muscatel is worth treating with more suspicion than second flush, because it describes a character that a genuine second flush may or may not have strongly in a given year, and it is a much easier word to print than to deliver.
What people get wrong
Assuming the first flush must be better because it is first, which is the single most common misreading of the whole flush system and is simply wrong for both Darjeeling and Assam. The practical mistake is the reverse of the first-flush one: second flush is a fully oxidised black tea and can take hot water and a proper steep, and treating it as delicately as a spring picking leaves it hollow.
Teas defined by this picking
Where this term is used
More in this tradition
