Online index, map, discussion, etc of tea estates? e.g. in Assam, Darjeeling.

This sort of info isn't readily available for Indian wines (they do exist.) This sort of info is readily available for various sorts of things in France, California, etc.

By the way, I'm not mocking you. I'd love to have a big map of the Darjeeling tea gardens on my wall!

/Lew

I had some sites bookmarked that listed the Assam estates but now when I visit them they are gone (I was making up an excel spreadsheet just for my own info). There's a page for Assam Company Limited at

Google tea gardens directory India and that will give you some pages to start.

Melinda, who has to get busy again with that project

....

Who'd 'a thunk? :-) But wine, I imagine, is something of a sideline for India, while teas are one of their best known exports and seem highly organized ... it's just we don't have the secret decoder ring.

I didn't mean to restrict my question to India. I'd also love to see some coherent info on the estates of Sri Lanka, or the many varieties of China greens, or.... No books I've seen have anything more than the vaguest of discussions, or a handfull of popular individual estates/varieties. Tea vendors may wax fond of verbiage regarding what they carry, but often provide little real description or comparison.

"Melinda" wrote

Thanks! This second, in particular, looks like a useful site. For something similar to the first, see

Thanks. 'gardens' is maybe the missing term. "some pages" -- some 29,000 of them! That should keep me occupied for an afternoon or two ;-).

hola,

i'm making a site with this kind of info, at least this was the idea to begin with that, to have information about shops, vendors, producers, etc [even products, labels, etc, but in a second part] involved in the world of tea, and with this objective information contributed by people who want to participate and me from other sites, books, places i know, etc to have a place and the opportunity to talk, discuss about them. that will be the subjective part of this site, the comments, written by people who visit the site.

i know groups like this one is a better place to discuss, you 'know' the people you are talking with, and is, let's say, more free to use, and participate... but a site like the one i'm proposing, is a database with well sorted information. there are more sites like this one, i mean web databases, and i think will be a very powerful and useful tool in internet... we can discuss about it, of course...

i don't want to be the center of the place, i do this as a personal project, but i'd like it could be useful. as you see is in one of those free hostings sites with ads, but at the moment i can't pay for an ad-free site.

i'm also interested in know places to buy tea or tea ware whenever i plan a journey. i'd also liked to have information about producers, and visit their installations if i ever travel to india or china, for example, as people do in wineries here in spain or in many other wine producers countries. and this is one of the reasons to begin with a site like that. maybe is a complex way to obtain information, but i think is a good way to share what we know, and not only me being the one that benefits.

regards from madrid, spain bonifacio barrio hijosa

ggull wrote:

A truly wonderful idea - but I tried adding new data and the site is extremely slow to respond would not accept the update.

Nigel at Teacraft

bbh2o wrote:

well, i'm very sorry to read that... because i'm afraid is not on my hand to improve the speed of the site, i could make an advice on the form page and give my own mail address to send the info by e-mail [ snipped-for-privacy@NOSPAM.bluebottle.com, delete >> NOSPAM.

Here´s a link to a small map of the Darjeeling tea estates. Together with a magnifying glass and a little guessing I found it fairly useable during some treks through the area.

PS: I´d rather be affiliated with Nescafe than with those guys.

Karsten [N 53°13' - E 7°46']

That's what I've been looking for; thanks so much!

Please elaborate on this.

/Lew

Lew, so called "Campaign teas" especially FF & SF Darjeelings clearly dominate the german market in those sectors and have been discussed at great length among tea lovers and professionals over here.

See:

(in german) for a little insight.

Let me add a few quotes from one of their own webpages,

some describing their own teas in terms like: "highest quality", "we sell excellent quality", ... Over the years I drank quite a few cups of their teas and would not describe them as being of the "highest" or "excellent" quality, I think of them as rather inferior, below average stuff. I tend to compare them to DJs I can easily get in Darjeeling for around 150-300 Rp (~4-7 US$/kg) as opposed to above mediocre stuff which starts at around

Another disconcerting statement from that page : "Wenn Sie den besten Tee der Welt, Darjeeling, kaufen können, warum dann noch andere Tees trinken? - in english" If you can buy the best tea in the world, Darjeeling, why drink any other tea ? [sic!] leave me pondering how I possibly can enjoy any of those "inferiour" teas like those coming from Assam, Ceylon or China.

And so on, yadda yadda ...

My statement you´re referring to however is based on personal issues I have with "campaigns" or "projects" of that sort which start out politically motivated and change into something 100% capitalistic. As usual I don´t intend to hold anybody back from making his/her own experiences with their products.

Karsten [N 53°13' - E 7°46']