AUTUMN RUBY TUESDAY – 50 Gms

Large, tippy leaves are anything but rare to find in Autumn but to turn it into a full-tilt black tea is a rare, bold and almost brazen move – almost as if they were sure how to express something Precious and Fleeting without turning it sad; without discarding the unwanted; as if they knew how to revisit and revise a heartbreak and sadness – light a fire around it – and watch the light dance and sparkle around its jagged edges and frayed fringes; as if they too had heard the song before and knew how to accommodate change without changing anything!

With the edginess of Summer gone, Autumn reveals more of the ‘personality’ of the Bhime cultivar leaves – a fierce sweetness alluding to something darker beneath. The only questions that need answering are what indeed are the parts that make up a personality and how far are we willing to go to accommodate the parts that make it up; how certain are we that beauty is not a hoax, despite….!

Let not the first sip make up your mind about the entirety – it will reveal the extreme context of its poetry in its Autumn melody. Keith Richards sure knew how to name something Precious & Fleeting: Ruby Tuesday – a full-bodied, thick, juicy, ripe and forbidden fruit of Autumn. Fiercely sweet with notes of Honey, Caramel and Cinnamon and aroma of rich, ripe Guavas, it is laden with Autumn Floral aromas – best described by the redolence of makeup: Vanilla, sweet-fruity and powdery. About halfway, in absolute quiet, autumn explains the extreme context of the first few sips – Powdery-Dry Cocoa and Dark Chocolate with Cherries – now intensifies the already thick sweetness of Vanilla and Honey – Of all the ways it could have gone, this is but one. Tell us another.

A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, trying to redefine her own understanding of beauty once asked herself “Is beauty itself an intricately fashioned lure, the cruelest hoax of all?”. Then, as if to counter the Pilgrim’s self- proclaiming, horrifying possibility that it might just be true – “A wind rose, quickening; it invaded my nostrils, vibrated my gut. I stirred and lifted my head. No, I’ve gone through this a million times, beauty is not a hoax… Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it!”