Tagged: small growers

The Rise of the Small Tea Grower

Most Assam tea today does not come from a colonial-era estate. It comes from a plot smaller than a football pitch, owned by a family who has never processed a single leaf of it. Here is who actually grows the tea, by weight and measure.

The Assam Tea Trade

Assam tea is grown by two entirely different kinds of producer and sold down two entirely different channels, one of them compulsory by law. The canonical account of who grows it, how it reaches a buyer, what the auction settles that a private sale does not, and the rules that bind both.