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
Sayama tea were brought to this region by rivers. The upper layer is made of a reddish loam created by the accumulation of volcanic ash. Together, these two layers make the region unsuitable for growing rice but suitable for tea growing, which requires high precipitation and high soil permeability. It is known that the Japanese people started growing tea trees roughly 800 years ago when Buddhist monks who traveled to China brought back seeds. A historical document from the Nanboku-chō period, , mentions as one of the best regions for tea along with , , , , and . However, the production