Mittal Teas.

Mittal Teas keeps a shop at 12 Sunder Nagar Market, a few steps from The Oberoi, and a head office with a second store at New Delhi House on Barakhamba Road. It works like a merchant house rather than a boutique: in-house tasters go through hundreds of samples, the company bids at the auctions and buys directly from the gardens only when the lot and the price agree, and on its own site it describes itself as a tea garden aggregator. Vikram Mittal is the taster the house names behind its blends.

The shelf covers black, green, oolong, white, matcha and chai, bought at auction and from gardens in Darjeeling, Assam, Sikkim and the Nilgiris. The tiers are small, which is what makes trying a new estate easy: a Darjeeling second flush from ₹ 140 for 50 g, with a 250 g tier at ₹ 630; Assam Black Gold from the Naharobai estate at ₹ 390 for 100 g; an Earl Grey at ₹ 249; an organic Darjeeling green at ₹ 300; an Indian oolong at ₹ 400; a Darjeeling silver needle at ₹ 550 and a Japanese matcha at ₹ 500, both per 50 g.

Around the leaf there are teaware and gift ranges, corporate gifting, wholesale and bulk import, and an hotel and restaurant line that has been designing tea menus for three decades, staff training included. Orders ship across India with a flat delivery charge. The same family runs a Mittal tea room in Sagamihara, in Japan, and keeps a representative for France — a long reach for a house whose Delhi counter still hands 50 g packs across the desk.