Darjeeling
A steep Himalayan district in West Bengal planted largely with sinensis stock, whose teas are sold by flush because the same garden produces genuinely different tea in spring, summer and autumn.
Protected designation
Darjeeling holds an Indian geographical indication and is protected as a GI in a number of other jurisdictions.
A protected designation governs who may use the name, and in which jurisdictions. It is not a quality mark and it does not certify how any particular lot was made — it settles what the word on the packet is allowed to mean.
Elevation
Recorded at 600–2000 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. Gardens span a wide vertical range; the figures are indicative rather than sourced.
Climate
Cool, misty and steeply drained, with a sharply seasonal growth cycle. Slow growth at altitude is the traditional explanation for the district’s aromatic character.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. Widely repeated in tea literature and treated here as a traditional explanation rather than a demonstrated mechanism.
When it is picked
Four named flushes, and each is a different plant physiology rather than a different label. The bushes go properly dormant through the Himalayan winter. The first flush is picked as growth restarts in late February and March, on reserves the plant stored before it stopped — small pale leaf, high aromatic content, a light and sharply astringent cup, and very little of it. The second flush follows in May and June once real warmth arrives, and carries the muscatel character the district is priced on. Monsoon leaf from roughly July to September grows fast and dilutes; most of it goes into blends. The autumnal pick, after the rain withdraws, gives a rounder and darker tea at low yield. The premium on the first two is scarcity and slow growth together, which is why it survives every attempt to sell the other two harder.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. The muscatel character of the second flush is widely and consistently attributed to feeding damage by a small leafhopper, the same insect relationship that produces Taiwan's Oriental Beauty. TeaHQ records the association as the standard account rather than as a demonstrated mechanism.
How production is organised
Estate country, and unusually rigid about it: a bounded and fixed set of gardens, each with a workforce resident on the estate under Indian plantation labour law, and a designation that ties the name to that boundary. Wages, housing and the fate of gardens that have stopped operating are live public arguments rather than settled background. Almost no small-grower sector exists here, which is precisely why Darjeeling can be bought garden by garden when most Indian districts cannot be bought by name at all.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
Production data
| Measure | Year | Value | Basis | Published by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Production | 2024 | 5,600 t provisional | Tea Board of India's own state- and region-wise return, published in million kilograms of MADE TEA and converted here to tonnes by an exact factor of one thousand. The Board collects these figures from registered manufacturers, so they count tea that left a factory, not leaf that left a field. Darjeeling is under half a percent of India's crop, which is the structural fact behind both its price and the pressure to pass other tea off as it. The Tea Board marks this table '*Provisional, subject to revision from April 24 onwards'. Read the 2024 figures as liable to revision. | Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata |
| Production (estate) | 2024 | 5,510 t provisional | Tea Board of India's own state- and region-wise return, published in million kilograms of MADE TEA and converted here to tonnes by an exact factor of one thousand. The Board collects these figures from registered manufacturers, so they count tea that left a factory, not leaf that left a field. The Board splits every row into Big Growers — estates with their own factories — and Small Growers, who sell green leaf to a bought-leaf factory. The split is by grower, not by factory: small-grower tonnage is finished tea attributed to the leaf's origin. The Tea Board marks this table '*Provisional, subject to revision from April 24 onwards'. Read the 2024 figures as liable to revision. | Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata |
| Production (smallholder) | 2024 | 90 t provisional | Tea Board of India's own state- and region-wise return, published in million kilograms of MADE TEA and converted here to tonnes by an exact factor of one thousand. The Board collects these figures from registered manufacturers, so they count tea that left a factory, not leaf that left a field. Darjeeling remains almost entirely an estate district, unlike every other Indian region in this table. The Board splits every row into Big Growers — estates with their own factories — and Small Growers, who sell green leaf to a bought-leaf factory. The split is by grower, not by factory: small-grower tonnage is finished tea attributed to the leaf's origin. The Tea Board marks this table '*Provisional, subject to revision from April 24 onwards'. Read the 2024 figures as liable to revision. | Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata |
| Production | 2023 | 6,010 t | Tea Board of India's own state- and region-wise return, published in million kilograms of MADE TEA and converted here to tonnes by an exact factor of one thousand. The Board collects these figures from registered manufacturers, so they count tea that left a factory, not leaf that left a field. Calendar-year figures for 2023, which the Board does not mark provisional. | Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata |
| Production (estate) | 2023 | 5,890 t | Tea Board of India's own state- and region-wise return, published in million kilograms of MADE TEA and converted here to tonnes by an exact factor of one thousand. The Board collects these figures from registered manufacturers, so they count tea that left a factory, not leaf that left a field. The Board splits every row into Big Growers — estates with their own factories — and Small Growers, who sell green leaf to a bought-leaf factory. The split is by grower, not by factory: small-grower tonnage is finished tea attributed to the leaf's origin. The Tea Board's provisional marking applies from April 2024 onwards; the 2023 calendar-year columns carry no such mark. | Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata |
| Production (smallholder) | 2023 | 120 t | Tea Board of India's own state- and region-wise return, published in million kilograms of MADE TEA and converted here to tonnes by an exact factor of one thousand. The Board collects these figures from registered manufacturers, so they count tea that left a factory, not leaf that left a field. The Board splits every row into Big Growers — estates with their own factories — and Small Growers, who sell green leaf to a bought-leaf factory. The split is by grower, not by factory: small-grower tonnage is finished tea attributed to the leaf's origin. The Tea Board's provisional marking applies from April 2024 onwards; the 2023 calendar-year columns carry no such mark. | Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata |
Figures are reproduced as their publisher stated them and are not converted, averaged or ranked. Where two publishers disagree, both rows appear — this comes from Tea Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Kolkata. The largest single trap in tea statistics is that FAO’s series counts green leaf as plucked while national tea boards count finished made tea, and the two differ by roughly a factor of four and a half. The basis column says which each row is, and a figure without it is not comparable to one with it.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as darjeeling, darjiling. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
Teas this region is known for
- Darjeeling first flush — Light-bodied and aromatic, closer to a lightly oxidised oolong than to a breakfast tea. The much-quoted muscatel note belongs to the second flush, not this one.
- Darjeeling second flush — Rounder and sweeter than the spring picking, with the muscatel note sitting over a light malt base. The comparison to muscat grapes is unusually literal for tea tasting language.
Other teas recorded from here
Other growing regions in India
The neighbouring districts are the useful comparison: they share a country, a grading convention and often a cultivar, so what differs between them is closer to terroir than anything a cross-border comparison can isolate.
Sources
- TeaHQ editorial synthesis — TeaHQ
This page is TeaHQ’s own synthesis throughout. No external document stands behind the elevation band, the climate note or the character described above, which is why each carries its confidence in the open.
Written comparisons
Where TeaHQ has set this region against something it is routinely confused with, and argued the differences out in full.
- Kangra vs Darjeeling — Two Himalayan Indian districts planted in the same colonial expansion, one of which was largely destroyed by an earthquake in 1905 and never recovered its scale. Kangra tea is Darjeeling-adjacent in character and almost unavailable outside India.
- Temi vs Darjeeling — Sikkim’s only significant tea garden against the district next door. Temi sits at Darjeeling elevations on the same Himalayan system and is planted on comparable stock, and it is a single state-owned garden rather than a district of eighty-odd estates.