India: Darjeeling Tea
Champagne of tea! Darjeeling tea is widely considered to be the world's most unique and expensive variety of tea and is prized by tea connoisseurs. The tea originates from a small area of India's West Bengal state where 86 tea estates form the Darjeeling District produce around 10 million kg annually.
Today, only the estates from the Darjeeling District can call their tea Darjeeling, thanks to the Tea Board of India. In order to protect Darjeeling and other unique varieties of tea, Indian tea growers formed the Tea Board of India, a nonprofit entity with a mandate to administer the trade and marketing of all Indian tea. The board controls the trademark rights to Darjeeling tea and has registered trademarks in the U.S, Japan, Egypt and most E.U. countries. The board also created and registered a recognizable Darjeeling logo and licenses its use only to the producers and exporters of Darjeeling Tea.
The Tea Board is also seeking Geographical Indicator (GI) status for Darjeeling Tee. GI status is a form of IP recognized in Europe which identifies a product’s quality, reputation or other characteristics as essentially attributable to the geographic origin.
