History of Meghalaya Tea: From a Forgotten Report to the 1970s Survey

The tea that never came

When the East India Company sent prospectors across India looking for land to plant tea, they found Darjeeling, the Kangra valley and later the Nilgiris. One expedition reached Shillong and wrote a detailed report on its rainfall, soil and climate, concluding that the plateau was eminently suitable for tea.

The Khasis made sure it did not happen. The Khasi ruler had a treaty with the British that forbade bringing in migrant labor from Bihar or Bengal, and tea needs a great many hands. Without workers, Meghalaya dropped out of the plans, and the tea boom went to the Assam plains below.

The report itself was forgotten. More than a century later it turned up “lying dusty and unread” on a relative’s bookshelf in Shillong, and it gave Geert Linnebank and his wife, Nayantara, the idea for the Lakyrsiew garden; their story is in The Lakyrsiew tea estate.

Jeebon Roy’s Chinary bushes

A few bushes did take root: Jeebon Roy, remembered as the first Khasi entrepreneur, planted some Chinary bushes from Darjeeling on his land outside Shillong. He is also credited with the revival of Khasi culture and language, and he had bought a large stretch of land outside the town.

That land is the thread that joins the old story to the new one. Part of it passed down to his descendant Nayantara, on the edge of Barapani (Umiam) Lake, and that inherited plot is where Lakyrsiew’s tea grows today.

In the 1970s, the Tea Board of India sent a delegation to explore tea growing in Meghalaya. It found the conditions “immensely favorable,” and plants from both Assam and Darjeeling were brought in. Three areas were earmarked for tea: Umsning, in Ri-Bhoi district; Tebronggre, in the West Garo Hills; and Riangdo, in the West Khasi Hills.

MeghalayaTeabox Masterclass · short

The two kinds of plant went where they would do best. Assam varieties were planted in the lower, warmer parts of the Garo Hills, and Darjeeling-style teas higher up, at altitudes of 3,000 to 5,500 ft. The higher gardens grow more slowly in the cool air, and that slow growth is what gives the hill teas their aroma.

Private gardens followed. On the outskirts of Shillong, the 1990s saw the beginnings of Lakyrsiew, where mostly Chinary varieties were planted. The garden itself was cleared from 2002 on what had been virgin scrubland. Our estate notes describe it as “revived as early as 2002, after its initial discovery in the 1800’s,” a nod to the old Company report.

The state government sells its own brand, Meg-Tea, in green and black orthodox versions, and about 20 farmers from Mawlyngot village formed a cooperative that sells green, black and white teas as Urlong Tea.

The writer Anjum Hasan has described the change well: when she was growing up in Shillong in the 1980s and 1990s, “no tea was really produced and marketed in Meghalaya,” and the local cup was boiled milk tea with plenty of sugar; now small plantations such as Sharawn, Urlong and La Kyrsiew experiment with organic black, green and white teas. She stocks up on all three whenever she visits. Read the full conversation in Teatime, Talktime (feat. Anjum Hasan and Zac O’Yeah) on our blog.

The old labor barrier has also eased. “Labor laws have relaxed to allow migrants,” Geert Linnebank told us in 2015, yet many of Lakyrsiew’s staff still come from the Khasi and Garo communities around the lake.

Of these gardens, Lakyrsiew is the one whose teas we sell, as its summer and autumn clonal blacks. For the wider picture of how Meghalaya fits among India’s regions, see Indian tea regions, and for Meghalaya’s big neighbor, Assam tea.