On January 10, 1839, there was a crowd at the East India House on Leadenhall Street, London. Hundreds of tea wholesalers and curious people crowd into the room where, in a few minutes, the first shipment of tea from India is auctioned. Experts in charge of tasting it found it to be as good as the one from China. Maybe even better!
The success of Assam tea owes above all to the stubbornness of two Scottish brothers named Bruce. It all began in 1823, when Robert Bruce, the eldest, half-explorer, half-merchant, discovered that the inhabitants of the state of Assam, in the easternmost part of India, were drinking a decoction that tasted like tea. A local chef initiates him, shows him the plant which, indeed, resembles the tea plant like two drops of water. In fact, it is beautiful and …