Munnar
A high-elevation Kerala district in the Western Ghats, producing brisk South Indian tea at altitudes closer to Nilgiri than to Assam. Much of it goes into blends.
Elevation
Recorded at 1200–2000 metres.
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
Growth year-round, shaped by two monsoons rather than by temperature. The south-west monsoon soaks these hills heavily from around June, the north-east brings a second wet season later in the year, and the drier cool interval between and after them is when the leaf is slowest-grown and best. There is no dormancy and nothing resembling a first flush.
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
Estate-dominated at large scale, with a workforce resident on the plantations and the same legal framework and the same live disputes over wages and housing that govern the northern districts. Munnar's estates are among the largest contiguous tea holdings in India, and their labour arrangements have been the subject of prominent worker-led protest.
How firm this is: Inferred from general knowledge of the district rather than measured or taken from a source that states it. The estate structure and the existence of significant labour disputes are well attested. TeaHQ records them without dates or attributions.
How the name is written
Also transliterated as munnar. Romanisations of a district name vary by system and by vendor, and a packet spelling one way is not describing a different place.
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.
- Nilgiri vs Munnar vs Anamalai vs Wayanad — South India grows a great deal of tea and almost none of it reaches drinkers under a district name. These four sit across the Western Ghats at different elevations, and elevation is the variable that separates them in the cup as it does in Sri Lanka.