The fine art of tea tasting

Last year I met Kurush Bharucha, a tea veteran who was wrapping up a 40-year career with the multinational Unilever, where he worked as a taster, buyer, blender, recipe designer, quality custodian and ambassador for tea.

- Aravinda Anantharaman

Last year I met Kurush Bharucha, a tea veteran who was wrapping up a 40-year career with the multinational Unilever, where he worked as a taster, buyer, blender, recipe designer, quality custodian and ambassador for tea. Now back in Mumbai from the UK, Kurush talks about how he became a tea taster, a rather uncommon choice of profession then, and even now. While finishing college in Mumbai, back in 1985, Kurush came across an ad for a management trainee—saleroom at Brooke Bond, owned by Unilever at the time. Assuming it was a sales role, he applied, and a few months later, arrived in Kolkata. That's when he learnt that "saleroom" referred to the tea auction room, where tea samples were tasted and traded every week. And so his career began, taking him into the company of an incredible variety of teas.