Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea by Jeff Koehler

Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea by Jeff Koehler
Publisher: Audible Studios for Bloomsbury
Release Date: May 12, 2015
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I chose Darjeeling: The Colorful History and Precarious Fate of the World’s Greatest Tea because as we all know, I love learning about all things Indian. Also, they drink this tea on Downton Abbey and I was curious about how an Indian tea came to be popular in England – if the characters on that show drink it, it must be good tea!

The history of the tea is fascinating. It arrived in India in a dramatic fashion – being stolen from China. Today the tea is grown in tea gardens, which are really huge plantations. The relationship of the tea garden workers to the owners is a totally different arrangement from anything I’ve ever heard of before. This book also touches on the state of Darjeeling tea today. The regulation process needs some work – there is a lot of fake Darjeeling tea out there.

Koehler goes into a lot of detail about the physical properties of the tea and how it’s grown and harvested. This part didn’t interest me nearly as much as the history aspect of the book but that’s probably because I’m not much of a tea drinker myself. Incidentally, I tried some Darjeeling tea for the first time after finishing this book and I thought it was really good. I don’t care much for regular black tea so I think there must truly be something special about it.

I listened to the audiobook version of this book. The narrator had a mellow voice with just a touch of an Indian accent that made it a pleasure to listen too. The only thing I didn’t like was that he used a full-on Indian accent when reading a quote from an Indian person. It seemed odd to do that for a non-fiction book.

I really enjoyed learning about a tiny subset of Indian culture that I knew nothing about before. I think tea drinkers of all sorts will enjoy it as well.

(I received a complementary review copy of this audiobook.)