Perhaps itâ??s because I donâ??t travel enough. Or maybe I am just a very sad, boring person. Either way, I have decided to start an armchair tour of the tea world. It gives me an opportunity to sample different tastes andâ??more importantlyâ??put my feet up for the five or ten minutes it takes to make and drink the tea. Anyway, I drew a lovely map of all the countries I am hoping to â??visitâ?? and stuck a pin to find a starting point.

It turned out to be India. So I went off and sourced three or four Indian teasâ??mostly from Special Teas, because they sell a very affordable $1 sample size for most of their stuffâ??and today, I got started with Nilgiri.

Nilgiri is a small district in the state of Tamil Nadu, in Southern India. It sits on a hilly, rainy plateau, so the tea produced here is high-grown at altitudes of up to 6,500 feet. I am far less familiar with Nilgiri than with other Indian teas, so I was very curious to give it a shot. I usually prefer to buy small farm teas, but I was constrained in my choice by the need to get a sample size, so I ended up plumping for a single-estate Thiashola gardenâ??which is as far from a small business as it gets. Set at an altitude of 6,500 feet, the estate spans some 464 acres and belongs to Hindustan Level Limited, the Indian subsidiary of Lipton tea owners Unilever. Still, it is one of the oldest estates in the area, and one of the first to move toward organic production.

The tea I got, which is not from their organic range, is a TGFOP, which stands for Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe. This is a grade in orthodox tea manufacturing that indicates a tea made with the bud and first two leaves of the Camellia plant which has plenty of golden leaf budsâ??also known as tips.

As per Special Teasâ?? instructions, I brewed a heaped teaspoon in 6 fl.oz. water at 100C (212F) for three minutes. The resulting liquor was delightful to look atâ??a clear amber color with a delicately floral aroma. The taste, however, did little for me. Nothing to fault with the tea itself. Itâ??s simply that I like my Indians to be punch-my-tastebuds teas and this caressed them softly. Itâ??s a bit like being into Gerard Depardieu (which I am) or Pamela Anderson (which I am not) and being offered Orlando Bloom or Calista Flockhart. This cup was very delicate with barely-there vegetal notes and just a hint of the lemony flavor that Special Teas highlights in its description. It is undoubtedly very elegant and soft, although it has a slightly astringent finish. Despite what Special Teas say, I donâ??t see how it could really bear milk and sugar without vanishing altogether. All in all, a cup for poised, refined types.