Country
India
India is the volume country: it grows more tea than anyone except China, and it drinks most of what it grows. Its industry was built from scratch as a colonial plantation business rather than growing out of village practice, so the unit here is the estate, with a name, a factory and an auction lot number. It is also where the tea plant's other half was found, since the broad-leaf assamica bushes of the northeast were growing wild long before anyone planted them.
What grows here
Three names carry the reputation and they have almost nothing in common. Assam is hot, low and malty, and it supplies both orthodox leaf and the bulk of the country's CTC. Darjeeling, in the Himalayan foothills, is planted with China-type bushes and makes a light, aromatic tea that tastes nothing like the rest of India. Nilgiri, in the southern hills, is brisk and clean and mostly ends up in blends. Below them sit the Dooars and Terai plains, and smaller high-value origins in Kangra and Sikkim.
The ground
Assam is a river floodplain barely above sea level, hot, humid and among the wettest agricultural land anywhere, which grows a large, fast, vigorous leaf. Darjeeling is the opposite case: steep Himalayan slopes from roughly 600 to 2,000 m, cool, misted and frequently cloud-covered, on thin soils that yield a fraction of what Assam does per hectare. The Nilgiris in the south sit high but tropical, and get two monsoons, which is why picking there runs nearly the whole year.
The bushes
Assam's own broad-leaf assamica bushes, found growing wild in the 1820s, are what made an Indian industry possible in the first place. Darjeeling went the other way and was planted from Chinese sinensis seed, which is the root cause of its lighter cup and its low yields. Modern planting is clonal on all three fronts: the Tocklai station's TV series in the northeast, AV2 and its relatives in Darjeeling, where the clone is now often named on the invoice, and the UPASI clones in the south.
Harvest seasons
Darjeeling is the one place where the flush is part of the name. First flush, from March, is pale, brisk and green-edged; second flush, in May and June, is the darker muscatel tea the region is famous for; monsoon leaf is bulk material and the autumn flush is softer and rounder. Assam runs on a similar pattern with the second flush again the prized one, malty and thick. The Nilgiris pick almost year round, and their winter frost tea from December to February is the lot to look for.
How it is made here
India's real signature is industrial. CTC, crush tear and curl, was worked out on Assam estates in the 1930s and it now accounts for the large majority of Indian production: the leaf goes through toothed rollers into hard uniform granules that brew fast, strong and cheap, which is what chai and teabags need. Orthodox manufacture, where the leaf is rolled whole and stays whole, is the minority route and is what nearly all specialty and export tea from Darjeeling and the Nilgiris uses. The two make incomparable teas from the same bushes.
What to look for
Darjeeling is the most misused origin name in tea, protected as a geographical indication in India and in the EU, and still sold in quantities the district could not physically produce. The honest label states the estate, the flush and the year, and anything that says only 'Darjeeling' is likely a blend that may contain little or none. Assam and Nilgiri are usually blended by design, so there the question is orthodox or CTC, and which grade. Grade letters describe leaf size and appearance rather than quality: SFTGFOP is a claim about tip content, not a rating.
How it got here
Robert Bruce recorded wild tea in Assam in 1823, and commercial planting followed once the East India Company decided to break China's monopoly; the Assam Company was formed in 1839. Darjeeling was planted from the 1840s with Chinese seed and quickly became the exception rather than the model. India passed China as the world's largest producer under British rule and held that position for most of the twentieth century. The bigger change since independence is domestic: India now consumes the great majority of its own crop, which is why so much of the industry is built around CTC.
Places in India
Named places inside India. The ones with a page of their own are links.