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The greens in the foreground is a tea field. Darjeeling tea is world renowned for its taste and muscatel flavour.

About Darjeeling Tea:

This strong, full-bodied black tea comes from india's province of Darjeeling, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Darjeeling tea leaves are grown at about 7,000 feet and are considered one of india's finest.

The botanical name of the Darjeeling Tea plant is "Camellia sinensis". It is a hardy, multi stemmed, slow growing evergreen shrub which if allowed to, can grow up to 2.5 metres in height. It takes four to six years to mature and is known to have an economic life of well over 100 years with good care.

Darjeeling has been mostly planted with the China Hybrid varieties which produce very fine, flavoury teas. This rare flavour is due to a combination of plant genes, soil chemistry, elevations, temperatures and rainfall, unique to the Darjeeling hills.

Plucking begins in March and closes by late November. Each tea bush in the estate is plucked every 4 to 7 days depending on the season.

Each hectare of plantation yields an average of 500 kgs of dry tea and a Darjeeling tea bush yields only 100 grams of made tea in a year. Each kilogram of fine tea consists of more than 20,000 individually hand plucked shoots.