Assam tea and Darjeeling tea are both black teas from India, right, so, not much difference then? Whoa! A whole world of difference, actually.
Let’s review. Real ‘tea’ comes from a white flowering evergreen shrub called camellia sinensis. There are two tea varieties, camellia sinensis sinensis and camellia sinensis assamica. The China variety (sinensis means ‘from China’) has small leaves, lives for hundreds of years and if left unpruned grows to 3.5 to 4.5 metres tall.
The Assam tea variety, discovered growing in India by the British, is more tree than bush, with large leaves. When cultivated it lives for about 40 years and can grow in the wild 13-18m tall. Assam is a low-altitude, humid and tropical area of India, so withering the leaves is a challenge and it’s a long wither that makes tea aromatic. Assam tea then provides a different profile. It is malty and bold, with little aroma and therefore a wonderful base for chai or for your additions of milk and sugar. Assam produces 700 kilograms of tea a year mostly using the mechanized CTC method, (crush, tear, curl), which is best suited to tea for tea bags. Tetley, Tim Horton’s, and most other blends use Assam tea as a key component. In fact, Assam tea is really the British definition of a cup of tea.
So, what is the Chinese variety doing in the mountains of India? It was stolen. Read about that in “Subterfuge” the next post.
Darjeeling is in the Himalayas, its high elevation and cool air results in tea buds that grow slowly which allows aromas and flavours to deepen and intensify. Plucking can only be done by hand and the yield is far less than in Assam. All of this results in the moniker ‘the champagne of teas’. Darjeeling can command much higher prices and for that reason 40 million kilograms of ‘Darjeeling tea’ are sold each year. Why the quotes? That’s four times as much as the Darjeeling region actually produces. Everyone wants to label their tea ‘Darjeeling’, but many do so dishonestly.
If you decide to try Darjeeling tea, please treat it differently than your Assam brew. Knowing now that Darjeeling tea has more fully developed aromas and intense flavours, has been painstakingly hand-plucked and is produced in far fewer quantities than Assam tea, don’t chuck your milk and sugar at it. This fine tea, once described by Rajah Banerjee as “a handicraft, a very specialized art” deserves your full attention and appreciation all alone in your tea-cup.