Tea culture Assam tea is known for its robust taste and dark colour, and Nilgiri tea is dark, intensely aromatic and flavoured. Assam produces the largest quantity of Tea in India, mostly of the CTC variety, and is one of the biggest suppliers of major international brands such as Lipton and Tetley. The Tetley Brand, formerly British owned and one of the largest, is now owned by the Indian Tata Tea Limited company. On April 21, 2012 the Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission (India), Montek Singh Ahluwalia, said that tea would be declared as national drink by April 2013. Speaking on the
Chinese tea Longevity Sprout, Eternal Spring Jade Leaf, Dragon in the Clouds, Longevity Dragon Sprout, Dragon Phoenix and Flower, and Eternal Spring Silver Sprout. The Ming Dynasty scholar Wen Zhenheng's encyclopedic book "Zhang Wu Zhi" (; Treatise on Superfluous Things), volume 12, contains the following descriptions of several famous Ming Dynasty teas: During this time, Huqiu tea (; lit. "Tiger Hill tea"), not to be confused with the black tea of the same name from the Nilgiris District in what is now Tamil Nadu, India) was purportedly developed as the finest tea in the world; however, the production quantity was rather small,