Darjeeling Tea Estates: The Gardens Behind Our Teas

Castleton

Castleton was founded in 1885 by Dr. Charles Graham and was once known as “Kumseri”; it takes its name from a castle-like bungalow that once overlooked the garden. Our brief says the castle was “probably just a building left behind by a long-ago money lender.”

Its sections have names of their own: Bhalu Khop (the bear cave), Jim Basha (the manager’s domain), Dhobitar (the washerman’s clothes line) and Baseri (the resting place). About 70% of the estate is heritage Chinary. Castleton’s 1992 muscatel set a world auction record, and it won a gold medal at the North American Tea Conference in 2014.

Margaret’s Hope

The estate was “Bada Rington” until the time of J.G.D. Cruickshank, manager from 1896 to 1927. His young daughter Margaret loved it and promised to return, but died aboard ship on the way home to England.

Its 586.18 hectares fall into three gardens: Margaret’s Hope in the west, at 915 to 1,830 meters; Dilaram, at 762 to 1,951 meters; and Edenvale or Maharani, at 1,066 to 1,358 meters, bordering National Highway 55. The factory sign reads 4,590 feet above sea level. A school serves the children of its more than 1,200 employees, and no chemicals may be used within 30 feet of a path.

Care runs to the bushes and the wildlife. Each year the estate lab-tests the starch in the shoots to see which bushes can survive hard pruning. Salamander (Bhanjyang) Lake, dug in 1947 by manager L. Helegon, was abandoned in 1995 and revived in 2003 for its rare salamanders. Its pluckers know where the muscatel grows: “that part of the estate will emit a particular kind of fragrance.” Try it in Margaret’s Hope Spring Black.

Giddapahar

Giddapahar, “Eagle’s Mountain,” sits at 4,500 to 5,200 feet and has been worked by generations of the Shaw family since 1881. When we visited its owner, Sudhangshu Shaw, he went looking for ladybirds on the bushes, proof that he used no pesticide in his relatively small 240-acre garden; its second flush is “particularly coveted.”

Jungpana

Jungpana lies 10 to 12 km south of Kurseong town, at 3,100 to 4,900 feet, and its Malderam division is full of old Chinary bushes. The factory has no access road: everything is hauled “some 600 steps” up the hillside, rations up and tea down, and in 2015 the rate was “Rs. 100 for every 50 kg up those steps.” The owner had to put up a tower to get a phone signal. The log bridge over the waterfall on the way up has since been replaced by a concrete one.

The isolation pays off in the cup. In 2015 Shantanu Kejriwal, who owned it then, showed us the 2013 front page of Kolkata’s The Telegraph, “A New Champion Rises in Darjeeling,” after Jungpana won its category at the North American Tea Championship. We describe its spring teas as “unripe fruits, sweet greens, and wet wood.” Its pluckers judge the year by the rain: “Last year, the rains were bad. Not a good harvest,” they told us in 2015. Try Jungpana Spring Chinary Black.

Goomtee

Goomtee makes about 90,000 kg of tea a year, and in 2015 its general manager, B.N. Mudgal, had 40 years in the business. Its owner then, Ashok Kumar, is the uncle of Jungpana’s Shantanu Kejriwal, and visiting buyers to both gardens stay at the Goomtee cottage.

• Okayti: formerly Rangdoo; the story goes that London auctioneers marked its tea “OK,” and the name stuck. It lies about 45 km from Darjeeling town, on the Mechi river at the Nepal border, and its factory dates from 1888.
• Thurbo: where Arun Kumar Gomden made Darjeeling’s first Silver Tips in spring 1979. Try Thurbo Classic Spring Chinary.
• Seeyok: founded in 1869, at 3,000 to 6,000 feet near the Indo-Nepalese border, and run by the third generation of the Mohan family as part of Tea Promoters India. It has 154 hectares under tea, interplanted with lemongrass, neem and native plants that hold the soil in the monsoon.
• Singbulli: “home of the birds,” established in 1924 between 2,500 and 4,500 feet; we travel there for its AV2 clonals.

• Badamtam: planted in 1858 by the British planter Christine Barnes, with a name usually traced to the Lepcha for “bamboo water carrier.” It was commercially started by the Lebong Tea Company in the late 1860s; a suspension bridge over the Rangeet links it to Sikkim, and a 14-foot Buddha by the artist Meera Mukherjee was completed after her death in 1998.
• Namring: one of the oldest and largest factories in Darjeeling, making some 300,000 kg a year. Its three divisions, Poomong, Jinglam and Namring, lie between the eastern slopes of Tiger Hill and the Teesta. Our Books to Read initiative took books to Namring’s children in 2020.
• Glenburn: established in 1859 by a Scottish tea company, where the Rungeet and Rung Dung rivers meet the slopes. Its owners run a small hotel on the estate, and through their guests they sponsor 46 children at private schools in the region.
• Puttabong: near the Rangeet valley on the Sikkim border, stretching from roughly 2,000 to 6,500 feet.
• Mim: the only tea garden in Darjeeling owned by the Government of India. Its name comes from “Mem ko Kaman,” the British lady’s garden. A worker’s son there told us he wants to be a doctor: “We have to travel 20 km to see a doctor now.”
• Risheehat: first called Tshering Bagan after the local Tshering people, later renamed “Home of Holy Saints”; a compact 141 hectares, mostly east-facing, in two sections, Risheehat and Liza Hill.
• Turzum: planted around the 1860s in the Rungbong valley near Mirik, among wild Cymbidium orchids.

Not every garden has had an easy road. Avongrove had been closed for 28 years before new management reopened it. Makaibari dates its tea to 1852, when Girish Chandra Banerjee saw local people growing maize (makai) on the slopes at 4,800 feet.