Region · in India
Kerala
Kerala grows tea in three separate hill blocks that have almost nothing to do with each other, and none of them is the Nilgiris, which is the district over the state line in Tamil Nadu. It is the southern industry's second address, overshadowed by that neighbour, and most of its leaf leaves under a generic south Indian label or under the Nilgiri name. What the state actually has is the south's largest single-owner plantation landscape, and a growing culture where tea is one crop among spices rather than the only thing on the hill.
What grows here
Three blocks. The High Range of Idukki district, around Munnar, is the biggest and the highest, laid out as continuous estates. Wayanad in the north sits much lower and warmer, with tea interleaved with coffee, pepper and cardamom on the same holdings. The southern hills of the old Travancore country, around Peermade and Vandiperiyar, are the third and the quietest. Black tea in both CTC and orthodox form is the output across all three.
The ground
All three sit in the Western Ghats and all three take the southwest monsoon at full strength, which is about as much rain as arrives anywhere in India. What separates them is height. Idukki's High Range is genuinely high country, with estates running up past 1,900 m, Wayanad is a plateau well below it and the Travancore hills fall in between. That spread is why Kerala has no single house style and why its leaf is easier to sell into a blend than under a district name.
What to look for
Kerala's problem is naming rather than fraud. Its tea travels as 'Nilgiri', as 'south Indian' or as nothing at all, and the state's own district names are rarely printed, so a buyer who wants Kerala tea has to buy an estate. The one clean exception is Munnar, where the estates are large, named and vertically integrated. Elsewhere the question is whether the leaf was grown and made by the same company: in Wayanad in particular tea shares a holding with spice crops, and the tea can be the side line rather than the point.
How it got here
Planting began in the 1870s and 1880s in two places at once, the Kannan Devan hills above Munnar and the Travancore hills to the south, both opened by British planters on land leased from local rulers. Kerala's estates were then consolidated into a small number of very large owners and mostly stayed that way, which is the structural difference from Tamil Nadu next door. Kochi is the state's auction centre and an important outlet for south Indian tea headed for export.
Places in Kerala
Named places inside Kerala. The ones with a page of their own are links.