TokyoB > writes:

> Jim,
> I think it probably is the same. When I was in Taiwan near the Tea
> Research Institute, there were several vendors of Assam that was
> locally grown. In Mandarin it was pronounced something like "ah sam
> mu".

Sorry about the nitpicking, but the Pinyin for this is A Sa Mu.

What's more interesting, in my opinion, is that, given the right soil
and climate, the Assam cultivar can be manufactured into tea that's
extremely different from what most people think of as Assam tea. It's
been mentioned here before, but it's worth repeating: some of the good
tea grown in Darjeeling is genetically Assam.

/Lew
---
Lew Perin /
http://www.panix.com/~perin/babelcarp.html