In article >,
"Mårten Nilsson" > wrote:

> So do I have a question? Is there some kind of standard Darjeeling or
> is it a very wide category? Can you expect anything from a tea bearing
> that name?

It is something akin to wine - Bordeaux can produce plonk or very good
stuff. The same Chateau can produce plonk or very good stuff and this
varies by season and year.

Like all agricultural products it is a wide category - a tea grown in
Darjeeling could be insipid and horrid and generally without character.
What Darjeeling is famous for (as are other tea growing regions) is an
intense flavor that is unique to the area - maybe 5 percent or less of
the tea grown there has that character. Most of the rest of the tea
will have varying amounts of this character so just on a probability
basis you are unlikely to run into a "good" Darjeeling. It probably
takes more money to buy a tea that has good Darjeeling character. This
does not mean that if you spend a lot of money you will necessarily find
good true Darjeeling character. For the most part it is a frustrating
experience of buying lots of tea and finding a little that you like.

If you taste the prototypical example of any famous tea (oolong, lung
Chin, Darjeeling, Assam etc. etc) you are likely to be impressed even if
you naturally do not like that style of tea. Unfortunately, very little
tea of this quality is produced anywhere in the world.

Roland