Phalap: The Assam Tea the British Did Not Discover

Robert Bruce was shown wild tea in 1823 by a Singpho chief whose people had already been smoking it in bamboo for generations. Their tea, phalap, only got its own government certificate in September 2023, two centuries later. Here is the tea that was there first.

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.

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.