The Lakyrsiew Tea Estate: Meghalaya’s Boutique Garden on Umiam Lake

The setting helps. The garden faces north, on virgin land with slightly acidic soil, and was planted with highland bushes, mostly China varieties. The owners judged that this northern exposure, the untouched ground and the acidic soil made it perfect for growing highland teas organically.

Our product pages place both current teas at about 4,000 ft, and the autumn tea comes from a dedicated section of the garden kept for autumn picking. The garden is about 514 km from our facility in Siliguri.

The forest left standing shelters wildlife and acts as a buffer around the tea. In 2015 about 25 acres were under tea and about 90 acres were left as forest, so most of the land is still woodland. Many of its staff come from the Khasi and Garo communities nearby, and some row across the lake to work each day.

The garden is also in our list of famous tea estates of India, and its nearest high-altitude cousin in the northeast is Temi, covered in Sikkim tea and the Temi tea garden.

A family land and an old report

The garden is run by Nayantara, a Khasi born and raised in Shillong and a descendant of Jeebon Roy, and her Dutch husband, Geert Linnebank. Nayantara Sawian, the youngest daughter of a traditional Khasi family, inherited the plot on the banks of Barapani Lake, and it struck her as ideal for tea.

They met in Brussels and raised their children in Europe, where Geert worked for the Reuters news agency, but came back to Shillong every year. Nayantara had inherited part of Jeebon Roy’s land on the edge of Barapani Lake, and on each visit they noticed more old trees had been cut down and boundary posts moved. Geert remembers mature trees “chopped down and rolled down the slope and into the lake, and presumably towed away.” They knew they had to put the land to use or risk losing it.

Then Geert found the East India Company prospectors’ report on Shillong, “lying dusty and unread,” on a relative’s bookshelf, and the idea of a tea garden took shape in the 1990s. Relatives and friends introduced the couple to tea planters, tasters and traders.

A retired Welsh tea planter living in Shillong, Bob Powell-Jones, joined them, and with a Khasi supervisor, Bah Lenson, he raised the seedlings while the land was cleared, contoured and given an access road. The couple met Bob at a party; he had retired to Shillong, where his Khasi wife had a home, and Geert describes him as “an experienced and very energetic Welsh tea planter.” Geert, a journalist used to breaking news, calls building a tea garden from scratch a “lesson in patience.”

Lakyrsiew year by year

From the start the plan was to compete on quality alone. “The only way we would be able to compete in a crowded marketplace was by pursuing quality at the expense of everything else,” Geert told us: “very fine plucking, careful handling of the green leaf, careful withering and rolling, careful drying and sorting, and junking anything that doesn’t meet our standards.” Fine plucking means only the bud and the youngest leaves, which carry the most aroma; for the steps, see How tea is made.

A factory in a cowshed

By 2007 the garden was producing enough green leaf to justify a factory of its own. A cowshed was emptied and turned into a micro-factory, made to Bob Powell-Jones’s own design, with a small rolling table, a withering trough and a hand-operated, gas-fired tray drier. Equipment this small can handle only a little leaf at a time, which is one reason Lakyrsiew’s lots are so small.

“Manufacturing our first teas was a proud moment,” Geert says, but he admits the first teas from the new factory were “fairly indifferent in quality.” Friends from the tea industry helped refine the production, and the teas began to show their distinctive mellow profile. In 2012 the owners uprooted and replanted the first field, which gave “a great abundance of leaf” but not the quality they wanted.

Lakyrsiew is still known for producing small batches, and its rarity is part of its appeal.

The silver needle

Lakyrsiew is also known for a rare silver needle white tea, made in very small amounts at the start and end of the season, and only when the weather is sunny enough to dry the buds in the open. On a cloudy day, there is simply no silver needle.

When readers of our 2015 story asked where they could buy the garden’s tea, the story’s author replied that LaKyrsiew’s teas were already on sale at Teabox. The photograph for that story was taken by our colleague Gopal Upadhayay, who visited the garden. In 2018 we shared a short film of the estate narrated by Nayantara herself.

On that November 2017 visit, the season’s samples were laid out on the veranda as dry leaf in white tasting cups, next to the foil packets they came in. That is still how we buy: our team tastes each tea at the garden once it is made, checks it against eight quality parameters, and brings in only the lots that pass.

Meet the grower

When we launched our Meet the Growers live series in June 2020, the first guest was Nayantara of Lakyrsiew. Kausshal Dugarr, Teabox’s founder, called it a “magical estate from Meghalaya.”

The series grew out of years of working with more than 250 growers across India. Every Wednesday at 8 pm IST it put one of them in conversation with our founder about their teas, their region and their times; the live series has since ended.

Lakyrsiew Tea EstateFrom The Source · 3:00

Taste the garden for yourself in our Lakyrsiew Summer Clonal Black and Lakyrsiew Autumn Clonal Black, or see how they taste and brew in Meghalaya tea.