The upper Assam valley, in north-eastern India, is the world’s largest tea producing region.
Its two thousand gardens account for almost a third of India’s annual harvest of 507 million kilograms, (compared to Darjeeling’s more modest 9.8 million kilograms) yet it was not until the early twentieth century that the jungle along the banks of the Brahmaputra River were finally cleared.
Wild tea plants sixty feet high were discovered in 1823, in what is one of the wettest and least hospitable regions of the world.
A typical Assam picker will pluck nearly fifty thousand stems per day, ‘fine plucking’ will consist of only the terminal bud and the first two leaves, a ‘coarse plucking’ includes the bud plus three, four or five leaves. The pickers are paid according to the weight as well as the quality of the plucking.
