TEA, the fave drink of India…….

Hardly claiming the nascence, its quite surprising to finding how this aromatic beverage dominated our gustatory organ, and it’s hard to opine INDIA without TEA. Thanks to the Chinese who made it official. Yunnan Province is considered to be the birthplace of tea.

What the world says.....

Lets see what Wikipedia has to says “In one popular Chinese legend, Shennong, the legendary Emperor of China and inventor of agriculture and Chinese medicine was drinking a bowl of boiling water some time around 2737 BC, when a few leaves were blown from a nearby tree into his water, changing the color. The emperor took a sip of the brew and was pleasantly surprised by its flavor and restorative properties. A variant of the legend tells that the emperor tested the medical properties of various herbs on himself, some of them poisonous, and found tea to work as an antidote.” Okay, so this makes it clear that Tea drinking originated from China.

Derived from Chinese Fukien dialect - t'e – is now the TEA. In Yue dialect, tea is also referred as Ch'a (now that sounds similar), and this is the name by which it came to be known in India, Japan, Iran, Russia, and the Middle East. However, tea drinking did not spread to other parts of the world until about the middle of the seventeenth century. The opening of a sea route to India and the East by the Portuguese in 1497, helped the spread of trading between Europe and the Oriental countries. Then the British Colony, Tea was gaining popularity in America.

The discovery of the Assam tea plant is attributed to Robert Bruce, who is supposed to have seen the plant growing wild in some hills near Rangpur (near present Sibsagar), then the capital of Assam, during his visit in 1823, on a trading mission. He made an arrangement with a Singphow tribal Chief - Bessa Gaum - to supply him some tea plants during his next visit, though it did not materialize due to his death. Instead, his brother, C.A. Bruce, in charge of the British Gunboat division in the war with the Burmese occupying Assam in 1824, and posted at Sadiya met the Singphow Chief who supplied him some tea plants and seeds. Most of these seeds were planted in Bruce's garden at Sadiya and some were sent to Commissioner Jenkins at Gauhati. A few leaves of these plants were sent to Botanical gardens in Calcutta. Dr. N. Wallich, who was then the Superintendent of Botanical Gardens, identified the leaves as belonging to the Camellia family but did not consider them to be of the same species as the China tea plant.

In 1841, Dr A. Campbell brought Chinese tea seeds from Kumaon and planted them in his garden in Darjeeling town. Commercial cultivation began around 1852-3. By 1874, there were 113 tea gardens in Darjeeling district alone. This inspired planters to try out tea cultivation in the Terai region. James White set up the first Terai plantation called Champta in 1862. Planting was then extended to the Dooars, but the Assamese tea bush proved more suited to this region. Gazeldubi was the first Dooars garden, and by 1876 the area boasted 13 plantations, which in 1877 led the British to set up the Dooars Tea Planters' Association.

Lets get back home now…….

Nilgiri hosts a large array of tea estates in the world. At an elevations ranging from 1000 meters to 2500 meters, tea gardens are systematically scattered here. The tea estates in Nilgiri are known for producing tea of mild taste with mellow and clean liquor. Considered as a blender's dream, Nilgiri teas are highly liked for its majestic liquor and strength. Unlike Assam, Nilgiri teas are grown all round the year. The history states that in the south, the pioneers cleared the forests to grow crops and following much experimentation, finally settled on tea. In the process they faced much hardship, combating disease, the depredations of wild animals and a chronic shortage of capital. James Finlay & Co. was the first to attempt tea cultivation in the high ranges of Kerala. The hills of Kerala, especially Munnar, are now home to the highest teas grown in the world. The specific geographical conditions and the height of the plantations make the tea unique. Tea was planted over the graveyard of coffee. Miles of coffee plantations had been infested with 'leaf rust'. Mann was the first planter to manufacture Nilgiri teas. He started a tea plantation near Coonoor in 1854, which is now known as Coonoor Tea Estate. Around this time, another planter, Rae, set up Dunsandle Estate near Kulhatty. Following their success, other planters in the Nilgiris began to follow suit in 1859.

The Nilgiris or the Blue Mountains, popularly known as the 'Queen of the Hills', are situated at the tri-junction of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. The region is well known for a concentration of 80 native plant species, which is a rare occurrence in nature.

The heritage........

Ancient India:

Well, there is a different beat about Tea cultivation or the ancestry of Tea in India. It is said that tea was a wild plant in India and brewed by local denizens of different regions. The Singpho tribe and the Khamti tribe also validate that they have been consuming tea since the 12th century.

The Myth:
Ramayana sorts the first glance of reference to tea in India. Remember the ABT logo – Hanuman carrying mountain. Hanuman was sent to the Himalayas to bring the Sanjeevani tea plant for medicinal use to rescue Laxman. (Don’t know how far is that true for Selaginella bryopteris is popularly known as Sanjeevani, a lythophytic plant with medicinal properties.)

A similar Chinese legend goes that the God of agriculture would chew the leaves, stems, and roots of various plants to discover medicinal herbs. If he consumed a poisonous plant, he would chew tea leaves to counteract the poison.

Entrepreneurship:
 
The role played by the pioneers of tea prior to Independence is a saga of courage, entrepreneurship and determination. Sir Percival Griffiths, in his History of the Indian Tea Industry (London, 1967) - considered to be one of the best accounts of the early years - described the first planters as having had 'to hew their way through trackless jungles to cope with disease and the ravages of wild beasts, to recruit and maintain the morale of the workers from distant provinces and last but not least, to learn the technique of tea cultivation and manufacture'.