Darjeeling Tea GI

Agro

Geographical Indication for tea grown in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India.

Sources

1. World Trade Organization — Managing the Challenges of WTO Participation, Case Study 16: Darjeeling tea wto.org accessed 23 September 2026

Darjeeling is the case study the WTO itself uses for the difficulty of protecting a geographical indication abroad. The WTO’s account sets out why the name is worth protecting: India is “the world’s largest producer of tea, with a total production of 846 million kg in the year 2002, supplying about 31 per cent of the world’s favourite hot drink”, and among Indian teas “Darjeeling tea offers distinctive characteristics of quality and flavour, and also a global reputation for more than a century”. Two factors are given for that distinctiveness — “geographical origin and processing” — the tea being “grown and produced in tea gardens in a well-known geographical area”, the Darjeeling district. The study is about the enforcement problem rather than the registration: it examines use of “the words ‘Darjeeling and Darjeeling logo’ by Japanese companies already registered in Japan by the Tea Board of India”, and unauthorised use and attempted registration elsewhere. A GI secured at home is not a GI secured abroad.

What this source settles. Where a statute or a directive is quoted, that instrument governs within its own jurisdiction and its later amendments prevail over any summary. Where a body describes itself, the page is authoritative for what the body is and does, and not for how well it does it. Where a case study is cited, it records one dispute at one time and is evidence of the problem rather than of the current legal position.

Related terms

• Basmati Rice GI
• EU MRL
• EU Novel Food
• EU Organic Regulation
• EUDR Agro
• ISPM 15

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).