Tagged: assamica
How Assam Tea Began
Assam tea was not discovered. It was commissioned. The East India Company already held the valley, lost its China tea trade in 1833, set a committee to ask whether tea could be grown inside the Empire, and sold the first eight chests in London in 1839. Here is how those moves, and the people behind them, made an industry.
The Plant the Company's Own Scientists Called Savage
When the East India Company sent three scientists to certify the wild Assam plant as real tea, two of them said no. One called it savage and demanded Chinese seed instead. The plant he doubted is what grows in Assam's gardens today.
The Wild Tea Still Standing in Assam's Forests
Camellia assamica grows wild today in forest tracts along the Assam-Arunachal-Nagaland border, no garden, no planting record. Here is where it stands, who keeps finding it, and why even a genuine wild tree cannot fully settle the question of what "wild" means here.
Estates and Terroir
Assam tea grows on a hot, low, river-fed floodplain in northeast India. The Brahmaputra valley's heat, monsoon rain, and alluvial soil are what make the leaf malty and strong. This is the terroir, the two valleys, the estate system, and what a single garden's name on the tin actually certifies.
The History of Assam Tea
The complete record of Assam tea: the wild assamica plant noted in 1823, the British annexation that opened the valley, the first eight chests sold in London in 1839, the Assam Company, the CTC machine that put Assam in the world's tea bags, and the region that grew into the largest tea producer on earth.
Assam Tea
The canonical reference on Assam tea: the malty, brisk, full-bodied black tea grown in the Brahmaputra valley of northeast India from Camellia sinensis var. assamica. What it is, where it grows, how it is made and graded, and where it ends up.