Darjeeling by Jeff Koehler review – a history of the world’s best tea

Teeming with characters and interest, this richly digressive book has atmosphere by the potful

I declare an interest: I am dependent on tea. I may not be up to Tony Benn levels of consumption, but I get into more of a flap when tea supplies are running low at home than when wine is, and I once nearly evicted a housemate because she scoured the inside of the teapot. (You just don’t do this.) So perhaps I was predisposed to like this book, and, indeed, I found it hard to put down.

After a while, I began to notice something odd about its turns of phrase and vocabulary: “liquor” used as a synonym for “alcohol”, and not just the infused brew of tea; hailstones “the size of baseballs”; and “color” where I was expecting colour. For, amazingly, Koehler is American and, while nowhere in the 10m square kilometres that comprise his homeland can you get a decent cup of tea, he seems to know his subject very well. The book is stuffed with startling and illuminating facts. For instance, the popularity of tea in India – particularly the ubiquitous roadside tea, spiced and sweet – dates largely from the 1960s. He recounts an auction in 2003 in which tea from the Makaibari estate – which, adhering to biodynamic practices is picked at the full moon – sold for 18,000 rupees per kilo, or nearly $400, a record at the time. The total lot was, as Koehler puts it, “the equivalent of two tea-stuffed suitcases going for $10,000 apiece”.

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