How climate change is threatening the taste and future of India’s prized Darjeeling tea

On a hazy March day in Darjeeling, Satish Mitruka walks through the dry leaves of the tea bushes on his estate as he explains how changing weather patterns are affecting his business.

“Darjeeling is a dying industry,” said Mitruka, a third-generation tea harvester in this region of West Bengal in northeast India. He said he keeps hearing this statement from his customers abroad.

“This is a worrying situation for us.”

In late February and early March the picking begins for the first flush of Darjeeling, often referred to as the “champagne of tea”. This first crop of leaves produces an aroma and flavor that is appreciated around the world – and accordingly, it is priced at up to $2,200 per kilogram.

But extremely dry weather during the winter months followed by heavy rain in March has made harvesting difficult this year, with a decline in quality threatening the flavor the region is famous for.

“The climate has changed drastically,” Mitruka told CBC News at the Narbong Tea Garden. “Since tea is a rain-fed crop, it requires proper rainfall on time.”

If the soil is water-deficient, Darjeeling’s tea bushes – spread across 87 geographically certified tea gardens – do not produce quality leaves, leading to a premium first flush.

Darjeeling has four seasonal flushes, with the first producing the lightest, most delicate and floral, slightly fruity teas. The second flush, harvested in May and June, is more full-bodied and spicier and what most people recognize as the quintessential Darjeeling cup. This is followed by the less valuable monsoon and autumn floods.

Irregular weather affects the flavor of the tea – and, as a result, its reputation, nearly 200 years after the British introduced Chinese tea plants to this region of the Himalayan foothills in the 1840s.

“When we experience dry weather, we don’t get that pleasant taste, that floral aroma,” Mitruka said.

Climate change has a deep impact on the Himalayas

Mitruka says sudden changes in temperature and unpredictable rainfall patterns are the new normal in the region, which is located at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres.

The threat of climate change always remains in the Himalayas. The mountain range is warming about 50 percent faster than the global average, according to Research Conducted by an international team of experts and published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.

“What happens in the Himalayas is that as you go up in altitude, the rate of increase in temperature accelerates,” said Eklabya ​​Sharma, a longtime ecologist in Siliguri, West Bengal, who has worked for decades on conservation in the region.

“So, glaciers are melting, rainfall patterns are unprecedented and the intensity and frequency of floods has increased.”

Although official data is limited, Sharma said the impact of climate change on the region’s tea plantations is clear, with winter rain and snow – which melts into the soil and keeps plants moist – having decreased greatly in recent years.

“In the tea industry, the timing of the rains is very important,” he told CBC News. “No rain in winter means no rain for the first time, no rain for the first time means you will not get real premium tea in the market.”

The irregular weather also includes heavy rainfall, including the torrential rains that hit the region last October. They caused landslides that killed more than 20 people, destroyed homes and destroyed five percent of the area’s tea plantations.

Buyers avoid spoiled tea

India is the second largest producer of tea in the world after China. While Indians consume the most tea globally, almost half of all Darjeeling tea is exported due to the demand for its quality.

Rishi Saria, whose family runs the Gopaldhara and Rohini tea gardens, said he spent the entire February worrying about what the weather would be like after several months of dry weather, before heavy rains arrived in March.

“In the last five years, we have had normal rainfall only one year. Otherwise, (we had) four years of drought,” Saria said.

Last year his first flush was badly damaged, with 70 to 80 percent loss.

He said the region’s tea industry cannot remain healthy as long as the first wave continues to be damaged by prolonged drought.

“This is our most prized crop,” Saria said, adding that buyers refuse to pay for tea affected by bad weather.

“Once the tea is not so fruity, it becomes a little plain and it becomes leathery,” he explained.

According to the Tea Board of India, production in Darjeeling’s 87 estates has dropped to just 5.25 million kg from a high of 14 million kg last year, while prices have continued to fall.

Changing climate is not the only challenge facing tea growers. Many of their bushes are getting older, which means they are less productive and less resilient to the effects of extreme weather.

Darjeeling has also long had to grapple with the menace of counterfeit tea claiming to be from the region flooding the market, especially from neighboring Nepal.

The Indian Tea Association has raised the issue of imitators stealing the premium Darjeeling Estate logo and packaging, and called on the Government of India to do more to address the problem.

“All the gardens have turned red. All the gardens have suffered heavy damage,” Mitruka said.

generational fear

The more long-term concern is that as the taste of Darjeeling tea diminishes with drought damage, the region may lose its identity as a source of premium tea.

As profits decline, the next generation is less eager to join the industry in which their parents grew up.

Mitruka’s passion for tea and the process of making it was passed down to him by his father and grandfather, but he says his 24-year-old son is hesitant to join the family business.

“When I talk to my workers, they also say that they do not want their children to pluck leaves,” he said.

Satish says the uncertainty is a result of shrinking margin pressure, but its roots are in climate.

“The weather is not helping us at all,” he said.