Assam is a state of India, producing world’s one of the best quality tea the Assam Tea or also known as the variant Assam. From a black tea to a milked tea 61 percent of the tea consumed in India comes from Assam alone. Rest comes from either Darjeeling or Kerala. You can find tea in any occasion served as a common beverage in all the states of India. When it comes to Assam, the Assamese tradition has tea into its food culture to a very deep level. Even newborn babies are given a drop or two traditionally. In every festival of Assamese culture you can easily find a cup of tea with other traditional food items like cheera (flattened rice) with curd, peetha (traditional biscuits), xandoh (rice powder) etc. The traditionally followed cup of tea in Assam is a cup of black tea, as commonly known worldwide. But in Assam if you ask for a cup of black tea you would probably be thrown out of the house of the host. It is so, because asking for a black tea there in Assam means abusing the host racially, just like the case in most of restaurants in America where asking for a cup of black tea indicates abusing the American Blacks. In America, most of tea and coffee shops has replaced the word black tea with the term a cup of tea without milk, and in a same manner in Assam a cup of black tea is traditionally called a cup of red tea. But don’t confuse this Assamese Red Tea with the red tea that is found commonly in Florida namely Florida Orange Red Tea. Assamese Red Tea is not made from rooibos plant or any other shrubs like the most of red teas available. It is derived from the Camellia Sinensis only. And sometime it is made from the commonly found variant Sinensis Assamica. Sinensis Assamica, the master variant of Camellia Sinensis, the cultivable tea from the Northeastern state of India, Assam, is the large leaved tea plan commonly used in almost all the Tea Estates of India and neighboring countries.

Though the first page in Wikipedia about Assamese Tea says that Assam is a Black Tea yet it is not accepted in Assam in this manner. The tea gardens spreading over whole the region of Assam produce mainly the black tea known as Assam in the international market. Along with black tea Assam also produces some considerable amount of green tea and white tea. And the finest of all the produced tea are exported mainly to UK, US and most of the European countries. The export of the finest produced tea to the foreign countries is somehow followed as a tradition in Tea business in Assam started by British during their reign in India. The first batch of export was an amount of 350 pounds or nearly about 160 KGs of Assam Tea to London. This first export as an experiment was made on the year 1838 and it was sold at India House, London in January 1839.

So, if you plan to visit Assam on your next trip to India make sure that you don’t ask for the Black Tea there. Ask for a cup of Red Tea and believe me you would be most welcomed.