Tea & coffee · 9 min read

Two Leaves and a Bud: A Guide to Munnar Tea

How Munnar's high-grown tea is plucked and made, the varieties and grades to look for, and how to brew a perfect cup.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

Drive into Munnar and the hills look sculpted: endless rows of clipped, waist-high bushes running over every slope, cut through by narrow paths and shade trees. Munnar has about a century and a half of tea history and is now one of India's best-known high-grown tea regions. Here is what goes into the cup.

The plant and the place

All true tea comes from one plant, Camellia sinensis. Left alone it grows into a tree, but on the estates it is pruned into a flat-topped "plucking table" at a convenient height. Munnar's estates sit roughly between 1,400 and 2,400 metres, with cool nights, morning mist and monsoon rain. At this height the bush grows slowly, and slow growth gives brighter, more aromatic tea than lowland gardens produce.

In South India tea grows almost year-round. Many tasters prize the leaf from the cool, dry months, roughly December to March, when growth is slowest and the flavour is at its brightest.

From bush to cup

1. Plucking. The classic standard is "two leaves and a bud": the tender tip of each shoot. Fine plucking is still done by hand. Many estates now also use shears to keep up with growth.
2. Withering. The fresh leaf is spread in troughs while air blows through it, so it loses moisture and turns soft and pliable.
3. Rolling or cutting. This step breaks the leaf cells and decides what kind of tea it will be (see below).
4. Oxidation (often called fermentation). The juices react with air and the leaf turns from green to coppery brown. Timing controls strength and flavour.
5. Drying. Hot air stops oxidation and the leaf turns dark and stable.
6. Sorting and grading. The made tea is sieved into grades by particle size.

Orthodox or CTC?

Munnar makes both. The Tea Museum at Nallathanni still displays an old rotorvane, a machine used in CTC manufacture.

Munnar tea varieties to try

High-grown black tea (orthodox)

The classic Munnar cup: bright, brisk and clean, with a gentle floral or fruity note. Drink it plain or with a splash of milk.

CTC black tea

Bold and malty. This is the tea for strong Kerala-style chaya, boiled with milk and sugar.

Green tea

Leaf that is steamed or pan-fired before it can oxidise. It is light, grassy and fresh. Brew it with cooler water so it doesn't turn bitter.

White tea

Made by a few specialty producers from young buds that are simply withered and dried. It is delicate, sweet and the least processed of all.

Spiced and flavoured blends

Idukki is India's cardamom heartland, so local blends often add cardamom, ginger, cinnamon or pepper, all grown in these same hills, for a ready masala chai.

How to brew a good cup

Store tea in an airtight tin away from light, heat and strong smells. Good leaf stays fresh for months.

Coffee and spice from the same hills

Tea owns the high slopes, but drop a few hundred metres and you enter coffee country. Kerala is India's second-largest coffee-producing state after Karnataka, and Idukki grows both robusta (bold and strong, on lower, warmer slopes) and arabica (smoother and more aromatic, at higher elevations), often under shade trees with pepper vines climbing them. The Cardamom Hills to the south of Munnar give the region its other famous crop, and the Marayoor valley adds its GI-tagged jaggery, a natural sweetener for your chai.

Where to see it made

Visit the Tea Museum at Nallathanni for the factory demonstration, or take a jeep up to Kolukkumalai to see orthodox tea made in a traditional factory high in the clouds. Both are part of our sightseeing guide.