It’s probably right to call Tea or Chai the national drink of Bharat. Tea is drunk in all parts of our country, in different ways. Chaayos is a “Tea” cafe chain that focusses on recreating the “adda” around Chai. The tea bush was growing wild in Assam when a colonial Brit discovered it and started the first plantation in 1820’s. We are now the second largest producer of tea in the world.
I have grown up drinking tea. Discovered filter coffee much later in life and actually became a filter coffee lover only around 2007, when we visited Coorg and discovered the Robusta coffee beans. In fact my mother-in-law would never have tea but she started enjoying that cup of tea during her visits to Delhi/Gurgaon post 2000. She would be reading late into the night when I would come back from work and we would have a cup of tea at that time.
The morning cup of tea was replaced with coffee more often, after 2007, but even now, we alternate between tea and coffee. Tea has to be the right colour, with just enough milk… not too strong, not too milky. I have too many rules for tea, just like I have for coffee. Actually we end up with a cup of tea every single day, either in the morning or the evening. While travelling by road, I always carry Wagh Bakri teabags and a hot water dispenser. It’s a ritual to stop somewhere on the way and make a cup of tea.
On our Sri Lanka trip last year, we bought some fantastic tea from their Damro tea estate at Labookellie. I still have some of it and it tastes great.
The first time I discovered the premixed tea was in 2002 when our dear friend Mani (who passed away ten days back) sent a whole bag full of those sachets for his wife Raji with us. We had been to Malaysia to his house and Raji was in Hyderabad at that time. She apparently loved drinking that tea, so we carried it back for her. I didn’t like the taste much. In India too, the premixed tea never tasted great….
Then from 2019 onwards, Krishnan and I have started drinking tea and coffee without sugar or any sweetener. Now, for us to drink sweet tea or coffee is very difficult as we have lost the taste for it. There are several brands of premixed tea like Girnar that Amma likes, but they all come with sugar, so Krishnan and I don’t like the taste.
Teafit – Unsweetened Premix !
Last year when I attended the inaugural WISE conclave Attended WISE, Got Wiser !, one of the items in the generous goodie bag was Premix tea from Teafit. The founder is Jyoti Bharadwaj and she is an ISB alum. The first time we tasted it was on the morning of our road trip on Nov 28, 2024. We each got a different premix – ginger, masala and cardamom. All of us loved it. I meant to pick up more packs of this premix, but never got around to it till two weeks back.
I bought Teafit Cardamom and Masala premixes. Had to order the Ginger premix and a larger pack size because we drank them all up in a week’s time !!!! The best thing about Teafit premix is they don’t have any sweetener. So Amma can add her teaspoon of sugar and we can have it without any sweetener, the way we like it. It tastes fresh, not milky and you can actually taste the Masala, cardamom or ginger.
Jyoti has a winning product and am sure Teafit will go places. It is replacing the Wagh Bakri teabags during our travels, that’s for sure. It’s also fantastic to carry it with us when we travel out of the country. We don’t have to worry about finding the right coffee or tea – just need hot water.
Thank you Jyoti for making tea so enjoyable for connoisseurs and everyday tea drinking folks. Wishing you the very best !
To buy Teafit products click here – Tea.fit or order on Amazon. Try it today !
2 thoughts on “Tea Tales and Teafit”