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Someone has rightly said that tea is liquid wisdom. But, do you know how and when this strong, refreshing, and tasteful liquid wisdom poured on the land of India? Well, it is believed that tea was brought to India by the silk caravans that travelled from China to Europe centuries ago. If we go by food historians, Indians used the Singphos tender leaves as part of their diet for its medicinal properties. It was used in cooking vegetables and soups too, before it transformed into what’s now famous as chai – a flavourful beverage seasoned with sugar and milk along with spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger.
Tea was introduced formally to Indians by the British, who intended to overthrow China’s monopoly on tea. As per online data, they found that Indian soil (especially Assam and Darjeeling) was eminently suitable to cultivate Chinese seedlings. According to food historians, after a good 14 long years, tea production in India began to boom, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The commercial tea plantations were first established under British rule when a native variety of Camellia sinensis was discovered by Scotsman Robert Bruce (King of Scots) in 1824 in Assam. Later, Maniram Dewan, the first tea planter in Assam, introduced Bruce to the Singpho people, who were drinking something very similar to tea. During the sample testing of the Singphos tender leaves, Bruce found that the taste of the leaf decoction was similar to the tea from China. Later, after his demise in 1830, his brother Charles pursued the interest, and it was found to be a tea variety and was named Assamica.
The tea industry in India started shaping up in early 1840. In 1841, the first superintendent of Darjeeling, Archibald Campbell, experimented by planting a few chinary tea seeds near his house, and that marked the official tea plantation in Darjeeling. By 1847, an official tea plant nursery was established in Darjeeling.
As per the Tea Board of India, at present, there are as many as 43,293 tea gardens across the whole of Assam, 62,213 tea gardens in the Nilgiris. And if we go by the reports, these numbers are going to only increase in the years to come, as the love for tea in India is eternal. The certification process of teas through the Tea Act of 1953 is a sign that Indians take their every sip very seriously.
While the very basics of tea lie in the fact that it’s a concoction of tea leaves, water, and milk, tea drinking has evolved in many ways, with every region of this vast country making its own chai variants. From the humble roadside chaiwallas to high-end tea lounges, you get a wide range of teas, and every cup is different from the other. In recent times, from Tandoori to Dum, even the cooking procedure has seen a shift that speaks volumes of the passion for tea in India.
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