Nepali planted stock
Not a cultivar but an honest account of what is actually planted in Nepal, which has no breeding programme of its own. The eastern hill gardens of Ilam, Panchthar and Dhankuta grow old Chinese seed stock and Indian clonal material — AV2, P312, B157, T78 — because they were planted from Darjeeling across a border that is a political line rather than a botanical one. The terai lowlands grow assamica for CTC. Nepali orthodox tea is compared to Darjeeling constantly and sells for less; a large part of why it invites the comparison is that it is frequently the same plants on the same range.
Where it sits in the botany
Nepali planted stock is recorded under Variety group not established, the variety group one level above cultivar. It is associated with Nepal, which is where it was selected or is most widely planted rather than the only place it grows.
Where it came from
Commercial planting in the eastern hills followed Darjeeling's, using seed and later clonal material from across the border, with lowland terai planting of assamica for CTC developing later and separately.
How firm this is: Inferred rather than taken from a primary breeding or registration record. The direction of the transfer and the shared material are consistently reported. Specific dates, the composition of current plantings and the share of clonal versus seed-grown ground were not verified against a primary source.
What the plant is like
Two distinct populations under one national heading: mixed old China-jat seed stock and Indian clones in the hills, assamica in the terai. Some hill gardens are young enough to be almost entirely clonal, and some are as old as Darjeeling's.
Why a grower plants it
Yield, hardiness, when it buds, what it resists and whether a machine can cut it. This is the half of a cultivar’s identity that decides what is actually in the ground, and it is usually left out of writing aimed at drinkers.
Nepal's hill tea industry is much younger as an export business than Darjeeling's and structurally different: a large share is smallholder-grown and sold to shared processing factories, rather than estate-grown and processed in-house. That changes what a cultivar decision means. An estate replants its own hillside on its own timetable; a smallholder plants whatever material is locally available and affordable, which in practice means Indian clones and old seed stock. Nepal's growing conditions in Ilam are near-identical to Darjeeling's — same range, same monsoon, similar elevations — so the material transferred without adaptation problems.
What it does in the cup
Hill-grown Nepali orthodox tea covers much the same ground as Darjeeling: light, floral and green in first-flush style, fuller and fruitier later in the season, with high-elevation lots showing real aromatic clarity. Terai CTC is an ordinary commodity black tea and belongs to a different conversation.
How much of this is really the cultivar?
This record exists to make a point that runs against the grain of the whole catalogue. Nepali and Darjeeling teas frequently share cultivar, elevation, aspect, weather and processing method, and they sell at very different prices. What separates them is a geographical indication and a reputation, neither of which is in the cup. That is the clearest available demonstration that a great deal of what a drinker pays for is neither plant nor terroir nor processing, and a cultivar catalogue that never said so would be leaving out the largest variable of all.
Cultivar, growing site and processing all shape a cup, and the cultivar is very often the smallest of the three. It is also the one that fits on a label, so almost every commercial incentive runs toward overstating it. This section is on every cultivar page that has been reviewed for it, including the ones where the honest answer is “less than you would think”.
What it is usually made into
The categories this cultivar is typically processed into. It is a statement about common practice, not a limit — processing decides the category, and a cultivar can be taken down more than one route.
- Black tea — Tea taken deliberately through full enzymatic oxidation, giving the dark leaf, amber-to-red liquor and malty or brisk character most Western drinkers think of as simply 'tea'.
- Green tea — Tea whose oxidation is halted early by heat, keeping the leaf green and the cup fresh, vegetal or marine in character.
- White tea — The least handled category: withered and dried, with no fixation and no deliberate rolling.
Teas in the catalogue made from Nepali planted stock
Other cultivars in Variety group not established
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No breeding register or institutional record stands behind the account above, which is why the origin note carries its confidence in the open rather than reading as a citation.