Ingredients · Tea

Darjeeling Black Tea

Camellia sinensis var. sinensis · Theaceae (tea family)

Darjeeling Black Tea
The lightest black tea in the cabinet and the least like the others — Darjeeling is often barely black at all, and a first flush can look and taste closer to a green. It is grown between 600 and 2,000 m in the Darjeeling and Kalimpong hills, and the cold is the point: slow growth in thin mountain air is what produces the muscatel note nobody has successfully reproduced anywhere else. Only 87 gardens, across about 17,500 hectares, are allowed to make it.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partLeaf
KindTea
CaffeineContains caffeine
Where it is fromIndia
TasteMuscatel grape, flowers and honey in the second flush; light, bright and green-edged in the first
How to brew it
  • 195°F / 90°C
  • 3 minutes
  • no milk, and do not oversteep

How to use it

Cooler and shorter than other black teas — around 195°F and 3 minutes. Boiling water and a long steep will strip the muscatel out and leave astringency behind. Drink it plain; milk buries it entirely. An afternoon tea rather than a breakfast one.

With food

Cucumber sandwiches. Stone fruit and grapes. Light cake and shortbread. Mild cheese. Smoked salmon. Almond biscuits.

With spices

Cardamom, coriander seed and nutmeg, all of which share linalool with it. Lemon peel. Rose. Vanilla, sparingly.

With tea

Usually drunk alone — it is the tea least improved by blending. Where it is blended, a light touch of bergamot or rose.

Its story

Where it comes from

Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts, West Bengal. Darjeeling was the first Indian product to receive geographical-indication protection, in 2004. The flush matters more than the estate: first flush, March to May, is light and floral with a slight astringency; second flush, May to June, is when the muscatel develops; monsoon flush goes into blends; autumn flush comes in October and November.

What happened

Archibald Campbell planted tea at Darjeeling in 1841 from Chinese stock grown in Kumaon, and further trials went in at Lebong in 1846; the cool slopes suited the small-leafed Chinese variety where Assam's did not. There were commercial gardens by 1856 and thirty-nine by 1866. The gardens were built by workers brought from Nepal and Sikkim, and are worked today largely by Gorkha and Adivasi families, many of them there for generations. On 25 June 1955 hundreds of workers gathered at the Margaret's Hope estate during a strike — the women among them through the union's women's wing — demanding maternity benefits, higher wages, a bonus and an end to arbitrary dismissal. Police fired. Six were killed: Jitman Tamang, Padamlal Kami, Amritmaya Kamini, Kanchha Sunuwar, Moulisobha Raini, who was pregnant, and Kaaley Subba, a fourteen-year-old watching from a tree. The next day more than twenty thousand people marched on Darjeeling town, and by 27 June the management had met every demand. Pluckers' pay went from six annas a day to eight, and a bonus was paid for the first time.

On the shelf with it

Sold on its own, and in these blends.

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