Indian Teas

Tea is a highly adaptable plant, a result of which is that tea is grown around the world. However, among the tea producing nations of the world India stands head and shoulders above any other. The total volume of tea produced in worldwide in recent years has surpassed 3 billion kgs, with India producing over 826 million kgs. Indian tea thus has over a quarter of the world market with a market share of about 28%. Isn't is strange then, that we don't get to hear much about the fine Indian teas?

Most people have heard of a few "big name" gardens from Darjeeling and another few from Assam, but there are many many small Indian gardens that are family owned and produce outstanding teas, but are competely unheard of outside of India. The main reason for this is the fact that India's domestic market, with its huge appetitie for tea (Indians drink tea like there were no tomorrow!) consumes much of the high quality Indian tea. To satisfy the domestic demand, the Indian producers produce large quantities of CTC teas, the kind that are popular in Indian market. Only about 11-13% of the teas produced are of the Orthodox variety, the kind of tea Westerners like to drink. It is therefore easy to understand why much of finest Indian tea never makes it out of India. Still, in 1998, India exported about 210 million kgs of tea, making it the second largest tea exporter in the world. Recently, due to heavy demand from the export customers, Indian tea Industry has started producing more Organic Teas. If you want to know more about the different kinds of teas, click here.

There are four main tea producing regions in India: the Darjeeling & Terai region, The Assam region, The Himachal Pradesh region all of which are in North India, and The Nilgiri tea producing region which is in the southern part of India. A whopping 1.1 million acres of land is under tea cultivation, employing about 1 million people. The Northern Indian tea estates produce about 75-80% of the tea produced in India, while the southern states account for 20-25% of the tea. Although the southern estates produce smaller quantities of the total production, they account for more than half of the total Indian tea exports in volume!

Estates of Darjeeling

Darjeeling Tea is grown and produced only in the hilly areas of Darjeeling district in North East India. By the laws of the Tea Board of India, only 77 Tea Estates have been granted the right to use the distinctive logo of Darjeeling Tea, and only these teas can be called Darjeeling Teas. The Annual production of Darjeeling Tea is approximately 10 Million Kg, which is miniscule compared to the total tea production in Indian estates. The Darjeeling tea, recognized world over as the most flavorful tea, is famous for muscatel flavor, which results from the unique microclimate of the region - mist covered mountains, and low temperatures through out the year. Research indicates that this distinctive flavor of Darjeeling is due to the VFC (volatile flavory consituents) being present in about 3 times the quanities present in other teas.

Here is a list of the gardens of Darjeeling: