Third Flush
Third flush, more often called the autumnal, is the picking taken on the Indian and Nepali estates after the monsoon has passed. It is darker, rounder and softer than the spring and summer flushes, cheaper than either, and it is the flush most worth trying once the novelty of the famous two has worn off.
- Window
- October and November
- Vocabulary
- Indian and Nepali estates
- Growth
- Slowing, after a spent year
- Cup
- Smooth, coppery, gently sweet
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 last substantial picking of the estate year, made in the cool dry weeks between the end of the monsoon and the onset of winter dormancy. Autumnal is the ordinary trade word for it and third flush the positional one, and the numbering skips the monsoon flush that falls between the second and this, because that picking is rarely sold on its own account. The tea is more oxidised and more conventionally black in style than a Darjeeling first flush.
When it happens
October and November, after the monsoon rains have stopped and before the cold shuts the bushes down for winter. The window is short and closes decisively: once dormancy sets in there is no further picking until the following spring.
What it does to the leaf
Growth slows again as the weather cools, which pushes the balance back toward amino acids after a summer of catechin-heavy fast growth, but the bush is now working from a season's depletion rather than winter reserves. The result sits between the two: more body and less brightness than a spring picking, more roundness and less bite than a summer one. The leaf is often darker and the liquor deeper than either.
What it tastes like
Smooth, coppery and gently sweet, with a woody or nutty depth and much less of the briskness that defines the earlier flushes. It is the most immediately comfortable Darjeeling of the year and the least dramatic, which is a fair account of both its appeal and why it commands lower prices.
How to read it on a label
The vocabulary is inconsistent here in a way it is not for the other two: autumnal, autumn flush and third flush are all used for the same thing, and some sellers count the monsoon picking so their third flush is a different tea from someone else's. Where it matters, the garden and the month tell you more than the flush name does. It is also the flush most likely to be sold without any harvest claim at all, simply as Darjeeling.
What people get wrong
Dismissing it as the leftovers. It is genuinely the cheapest of the three and genuinely the least complex, but it is also the one that takes milk without falling apart, holds up in a large pot, and does not punish an inattentive brew, which makes it the most useful Darjeeling to keep in the house. Expecting muscatel or a first flush's floral lift is the reliable route to disappointment.
Teas defined by this picking
Where this term is used
More in this tradition
