Munnar Tea: A Guide to Kerala Tea from the High Range

The town sits at about 1,500 m, and the tea gardens climb the slopes around it on every side. The hills here are the Kannan Devan hills, which planters have long called the High Range. The town’s own name is usually explained as “three rivers,” after the streams that meet there.

The plantation company that owns most of the estates gives its address as KDHP House, Munnar, Idukki District, Kerala, on the papers it has sent us over the years.

Shola country

Like the Nilgiris to the north, Munnar is shola country: pockets of dense evergreen forest in the folds of the hills, with open grassland on the ridges above. Cool air, heavy monsoon rain and rich forest soil make it one of the main tea regions of south India, and the best known in Kerala.

That forest matters for more than the view. As our blog noted in its profile of a Nilgiri-born member of our procurement team, two of India’s four biodiversity hotspots are in the two mountain ranges that hold its great tea hills, the Himalayas and the Western Ghats. Read A Nilgiri girl in Darjeeling.

Kerala tea beyond Munnar

Tea also grows in other hill districts of the state, such as Wayanad in the north, but when people talk about Kerala tea, Munnar is usually what they mean. Another old planting district, Peermade, appears in our blog’s story of planters’ club nights; it is told on our history of Munnar tea page.

India’s tea map runs from the Himalayas in the northeast to these southern hills. For the whole picture, see our guide to Indian tea regions, and for the bigger story of tea in India, Indian tea: the complete guide.

The full story has its own page: Munro’s lease of 136,600 acres, the Chinese tea maker John Ajoo and his 13-acre “Chinaman’s field,” the Finlay estates, the 1924 floods and the Tata years.

In 2005 the Tatas decided to step back from running the Munnar plantations. Instead of selling them, they proposed a participatory model and handed the business to the people who worked on it.

According to the figures in our 2017 Tea 101 post, about 98% of the 13,000 workers became shareholders, together owning around 68% of the company. Tata Tea kept 18%, and a trust and other stakeholders held the remaining 14%. Each worker held at least 300 shares.

The change turned a loss-making business back into a profitable one, and in Munnar the model has worked well for the industry and for the workers alike. It is a very different story from the old plantation pattern of distant owners and resident managers.

Teabox and KDHP

We know the company as a supplier, not only as a story. Teabox has bought tea directly from KDHP, dealing with its marketing office in Munnar, and our team has kept in touch with the company since at least 2015.

On its own papers the company spells its name Kanan Devan, with one n in Kanan; most writers, and this guide, use Kannan. No Munnar tea is in our shop today, and the last section of this guide suggests the closest teas we do sell.

The cool weather and green hills made Munnar a favorite retreat long ago, and today tea and tourism are its twin trades. A trip usually takes in:

• The tea gardens: roads and estate tracks run right through the gardens, so you see the bushes up close, often with pluckers at work on the slopes.
• A tea factory: a factory visit shows how fresh leaf becomes black tea, through withering, rolling, oxidation, drying and sorting. Our guide to how tea is made explains each step.
• The tea museum: run by the plantation company in Munnar, it shows the machines, photographs and methods used on the estates since the early days. Our 2017 research notes place it at KDHP’s Nallathanni Estate.
• A night on an estate: several old estate bungalows and tea valley resorts take guests, and waking up among the bushes is the best way to see the gardens in the early light.

When is the best time to visit Munnar?

The cooler, drier months after the monsoon, roughly September to March, are the most comfortable for walking in the gardens. The southwest monsoon brings very heavy rain from about June to August, when the hills are at their greenest but mist and landslides can close roads.

Once every twelve years or so, the slopes around Munnar turn blue when the kurinji shrub flowers, the same bloom that gave the Nilgiris, the “blue mountains,” their name.

Where to drink tea in Kerala

Outside the estates, Kerala drinks its tea at the chai kada, the small chai stall found on almost every corner of the state. Our blog’s tour of regional chai describes cups served with pazham pori and bonda, the local snacks, alongside.

Teabox once served tea in Kerala too, at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Fort Kochi; that story is in the last section of this guide.

• Aroma: clean and biscuity, like a plain tea biscuit.
• Taste: strong and brisk, with a lively, clean edge.
• Body: rounded and full, strong enough for milk.
• Best with: plain for a bright morning cup, or with a splash of milk.

Orthodox and CTC

Munnar makes both orthodox tea, from whole and broken leaf rolled the traditional way, and CTC tea, with the leaf cut into small granules for a quick, strong brew. The orthodox teas are the ones to look for if you drink your tea plain.

The CTC teas go into strong blends and the milky, sweet chai of everyday tea stalls. Not sure of the difference? Read Orthodox vs CTC tea, and for strong CTC chai, Karak (kadak) chai.

A year-round harvest

Unlike Darjeeling and Assam, where the bushes rest from about December to February, tea in the south of India grows through most of the year, so the hills do not have the same sharp line of spring and summer flushes.

Our own notes on the Nilgiris, the nearest region we buy from, explain why. In winter and early spring the bushes there grow more slowly but are not pruned as they are in the north, so the factories keep making tea. Our 2023 training deck lists the Nilgiris as producing through the year. Our guide to the seasons of tea covers how this differs from region to region.

What we can and cannot tell you

Every tea we sell is tasted and selected by our team in Siliguri, and the cup notes on our product pages come from those tastings. We have bought tea from Munnar, but we have never listed a Munnar tea or published our own notes on one, so the description above comes from our 2017 Tea 101 guide rather than a current tasting.

The two regions share the same mountain chain, the same shola landscape and a similar history of British planters, so it is no surprise their teas resemble each other. The ties run into the buildings too: many early Nilgiri planters came over from Ceylon after the coffee blight, bringing Ceylonese carpenters and masons of Kerala origin, and the steep tiled roofs of the older Nilgiri bungalows show their work.

What our tasters say about the Nilgiri side

The Nilgiris have made a name for fragrant, high-grown orthodox teas and especially for frost teas, picked when cold, clear winter nights slow the bushes down. Our 2023 training deck puts the Nilgiri gardens at 1,000 to 2,500 m, making both orthodox and CTC tea.

Our tasters’ 2017 notes add two working details. Nilgiri tea generally does not turn cloudy as it cools, which is why it also makes good iced tea. And the winter teas are made from the new shoots that come 10 to 15 days after one or two December showers.

Read Nilgiri tea for the region, and Winter and frost teas from the Nilgiris for its most prized season.

1. Measure: about 2 to 2.5 g of leaf, or one heaped teaspoon, for each 250 ml (8 oz) cup.
2. Heat the water: 90–95°C (195–203°F) to drink it plain, or 95–100°C (203–212°F) if you plan to add milk.
3. Steep: 3 to 4 minutes plain, 4 to 5 minutes for milk tea. Taste before you add anything.
4. Strain and serve: plain, or with a splash of milk. If it is too strong, add a little hot water rather than steeping for less time next round.

The three ways a cup goes wrong

One of our writers met all of them on a family trip across Kerala. In boutique hotels and homestays alike, she found the tea “too milky in some places, too watery at others, and downright insipid at some others.”

One morning at a homestay she asked the lady of the house if she could make her own, and came back from the kitchen with two cups that finally pleased her mother. Her story, Making the Perfect Tea, is a good read before a trip. The fixes are the ones above: enough leaf, hot enough water, a full steep, and milk added only to taste.

CTC tea from Munnar is made for boiling with milk, sugar and spices. For that, follow How to make masala chai at home; for every other tea, our guide to brewing loose leaf tea has a full chart.