IMG_20151012_185910 2Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more social media sites have done unparallelled work for the cause of innumerable tea businesses all over the world. Work which the web-shops alone could not do as they were not “certified” to prove who is good and who is bad.

Remember, in 1975 or so organic certification recognised teas and made them “safe” to the consumers. Makaibari got the ball rolling and almost every other producer in Darjeeling followed suit overnight. And almost immediately there were almost no non-organic tea producers.

Now we are in need of a “second generation” certification as to who is a genuine small grower or which tea is “hand-crafted” or artisan. With billion-dollar business and four billion kilos of annual production worldwide, you need an agency big enough to handle this multitude and gross acreage under production.

Doke, coming out of Bihar, is the case in question. Bihar is a “non-traditional tea growing area” as classified by Indian Tea Board, but who knows what that means? Until recently these things were unknown, but today we know plenty and everybody is proliferating overnight.

Elyse started Tealet–a thing of tomorrow done today–and started giving these small growers worldwide exposure to the consumers directly. But the question remains: who is a small grower or who is a artisan producer?

Let someone take the yoke and start the game… The invitation is open to everyone.