Lahijan
The town in Gilan that Iranian tea is named after, and the place the industry was started from. The hillsides immediately above Lahijan are terraced in narrow steps up to the treeline, worked by hand in plots small enough to be measured in rows, and the tea made from them is the reference point Iranian drinkers use — 'Lahijan' on a packet functions the way 'Darjeeling' does, as the good version of the national product. The introduction of the crop is conventionally credited to a Qajar-era diplomat who brought planting material and method back from India around the turn of the twentieth century; his tomb above the town now houses the national tea museum, which tells you how central the story is to the town's account of itself.
History on this page: Widely repeated legend
Repeated very widely and not evidenced. Recorded because the story is itself part of the culture, not because it happened.
This district’s description dates something — a founding, a first planting, a period of expansion. The label above says on what basis, and it applies to the historical statements rather than to the elevation, climate or soil claims below, which carry their own confidence separately.
Elevation
Recorded at 50–700 metres.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. A wide band because the gardens run from close to the Caspian plain up the first slopes of the Alborz. The upper plots are the ones sold as the better tea, and the difference between the two ends of this range is the difference growers are describing when they talk about hillside versus lowland leaf.
Climate
Humid subtropical and genuinely wet — the Alborz wall traps moisture coming off the Caspian and rings rain out of it over the coastal strip, giving Gilan a climate with no equivalent on the Iranian plateau a short distance south. Winters are mild rather than tropical, so the bush has a real if short dormancy, and summers are muggy.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
When it is picked
Three passes through the gardens in a normal year, beginning in spring and running to late summer, with the first pick treated as the quality crop and the later ones as volume. The spring pluck is what carries the Lahijan name; the third is coarse and mostly goes into the cheaper end of the domestic market.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How production is organised
Very small family gardens — tens of thousands of them across the Caspian strip — hand-plucked and sold as green leaf into a mix of private and state-linked factories under a purchase and support arrangement. There is no estate sector, no auction and no export identity: the whole industry exists to supply a domestic market that drinks far more tea than the country grows.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as lahijan, lahidjan. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
Other growing regions in Iran
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.