Earlier in the week week, we covered Arya Tea Estate, one of only two non-colonial tea estates in operation today in Darjeeling District. In Part 2, we cover the second non-colonial tea estate, Giddaphahar Estate.
Perched on the side of a cliff, when co-owner of Giddapahar Tea Estate, Sudanshu Shah, looks down at the light of Kurseong town at night, he wonders what the birds of prey for which his garden has been named would have seen when his forbears arrived at the plantation and began clearing the forest for tea cultivation.
Giddapahar means falcon’s cliff, and the airborne predators soar high above gardens as do vultures, which circle fallen livestock. As one takes in the view of the estate, it’s easy to imagine being one of them, gliding above the tree line and taking in the breathtaking vista of this remarkably beautiful area.
Unlike most other tea estates in Darjeeling, Giddapahar was not only established by Indians but has also remained in the hands of a single family for its entire existence. The Shah family, along with the help of a manager named Bose who had worked in the nascent tea industry in India, cleared the forest and planted the tea bushes in the estate beginning in 1888 and has passed the property down from one generation to the next, living and working on it to cultivate some of the finest teas in the region.
They stand as an anomaly in Darjeeling, for typically owners do not actually stay at their tea estate(s). One of the most famous of the owners who actually stayed at his estate is Rajah Banerjee of Makaibari Tea Estate, but he sold his controlling stake to Luxmi Estates just over a decade ago.
Many think that like Arya and Giddapahar, Makaibari does not have colonial origins, but it was established by a retired officer from the (British) Indain Army named Captain Samler, who had obtained tea plants and seeds from Dr. Archibald Campbell. Then Superintendent of Darjeeling, Campbell is credited with introducing the Chinese variety of tea in Darjeeling. In his retirement from the military, Samler had become an agent of the British East India Company. It had acquired part of Darjeeling from a combination of the Kingdoms of Nepal and Sikkim, which the British had taken after members of the East India company had been captured and imprisoned in Sikkim on orders of the Choygal [ruler]. Samler had started planting Campbell’s China plants on the rocky soil of Kurseong where Makaibari stands, of which he had taken possession after his troops had occupied it.
Makaibari was one of the first commercial tea gardens to be established by the British in 1852 along with Alubari and Tukvar (now known as Puttabong Tea Estate—a property held by Jayshree Tea & Industries Ltd.). Samler only lived until middle age, and while ailing, he bequeathed his interest in Makaibari to his good friend and former commissar and correspondent for the British, Girish Chandra Banerjee, only six years after it was founded.
G.C. Banerjee’s fourth generation descendent and the last of the family to own Makaibari, Swaraj Kumar (Rajah) Banerjee in his recently launched book, Chai Time: A Darjeeling Tea Planter’s Journey from Makaibari to Rimpocha, writes, “He [Girish Chandra Banerjee] had neither the inclination nor the time to nurture the demands of the nascent and disputed tea plantation. Shrewdly, he turned the plantation over to a British management agency, Jardine Skinner, based out of Hong Kong.”
The agency ran the estate until the author’s grandfather disbanded its hold on the property and put his son, the Rajah’s father, in charge. Hence, Makaibari was developed in the same manner as the estates owned by British concerns despite being acquired in 1859 by an Indian. It wasn't until Rajah Banerjee took over the estate in the '70s and established a body in 1991 to advocate for social reform and women's rights that the culture significantly changed on the estate.
Since G.C Banerjee obtained the deed of registration from Captain Samler, the estate has been run by the Banerjee family until Rajah Banerjee sold it to Luxmi Tea Company Pvt. Ltd. in 2014. Three years later, when he was ready to walk away entirely, Banerjee also gave the minority interest he had retained to Makaibari workers. So, despite its colonial past, in many ways Makaibari is an indigenous estate, but there is no doubt that it was run in a colonial fashion for quite some time.
Giddapahar, however, is run in the style of family businesses. The two brothers who co-own the estate are involved in near every aspect of its operations.
“We don’t have any head office in Calcutta or Siliguri like the other tea companies,” says Shah. “Maybe we are the only family which stays on its own estate. Actually, it is our home.”
Shah says that it used to be that even owners who held multiple gardens or who stayed elsewhere were at least planters. Today, for many owners, cultivating tea is not their primary business. “Maybe they are builders or promoters, but we are the fourth generation of planters beginning in 1888,” Shah proclaims, proudly.
The Shahs began handcrafting their tea, and then they mechanized in 1907 when their factory was built. They still handcraft the white teas, though.
Giddapahar teas bear the distinct aroma of Darjeeling because most of their leaf is from the original China bush that was planted by their forbears. “Originally 90% of the garden was pure China,” says Shah. “But now, every year we are planting twenty to thirty thousand young teas, which are good quality clonals,” he says. This has changed the proportion to 75% China Bush, 15% young clonal tea, and 10% assamica.
The assamica was given to the estate by the Tea Research Association of India, but its yield has come down as the plants were received back in the 1970s.
The new plants in that elevation take between eight to ten years to become viable.
“In the plains, it takes about five years for young plants to yield leaf that is fit for processing,” Shah explains. “But in the hills, especially a garden of our elevation, which is around 4,900 feet, it takes a minimum of eight years. For AV 2 clone, it takes 10 years.”
Elaborating, Shah states that AV 2 clone was designed for mid-elevation gardens, but it has become so popular and in demand that it is being planted at high elevations. This causes the bushes to grow thinly and yield decreases, though the quality of leaf cultivated is quite high. “Yield-wise, it is not good,” says Shah. “But quality-wise, there is no doubt, it is exceptional.”
Shah says, and in keeping with what this writer has observed, the AV 2 clone has become quite common in Darjeeling. Shah attributes it to the ease with which the common consumer can associate the flavor of the clone with Darjeeling. It’s almost like being hit by a drug, he implies. One needn’t sip the brew, slowly discerning flavor notes. Rather, the Darjeeling taste comes through quite briskly; hence, it’s popularity. It certainly isn’t difficult to sell AV 2 clone.
It seems to be the old-school connoisseurs who are more inclined to prefer the original China bush. Also, the original plants must be carefully cultivated and the flavor almost coaxed out of the plant whereas the new clones like AV 2 are bursting with flavor.
Shah’s garden produces only 30-35,000 kilograms of tea, but he gets buyers for it from all over the world. “We sell about 7000 [kilograms] only to Japan,” he says. He believes it’s important to match the leaf with the buyer as their preferences are not uniform.
Shah says most Darjeeling tea companies are over-focused on export markets, ignoring the Indian market. However, he claims that as salaries have increased in India, domestic consumers are willing to spend more to buy premium tea. And despite the oft gloomy tales in newspapers, demand for authentic Darjeeling tea remains high. He feels it just needs to be marketed in a more effective manner.
I ask Shah whether he intends to convert his garden to organic. He tells me that he would if he could get enough cow dung to use as fertilizer. He explains that to properly convert to organic, one needs 10 metric tons of cow dung per hectare under cultivation. “And I would need to use local cows to ensure they are grazing on grass that is organic. I wouldn’t be able to procure the manure from the cantonment at Siliguri because I don’t know what the cows are grazing on.”
So, he claims what happens is that due to fertilizer shortages, the organic gardens end up starving their plants of fertilizer due to the sheer volume that is required.
“I know German buyers who tell me, I am tasting organic [tea] but the flavor isn’t what it used to be,” Shah says. “Why is this so? It is because the plants are being starved of nutrients. And, this is because for the planter, everything looks okay—that’s because the plants can’t complain and say, ‘Hey I’m starving here!’ So, they keep getting underfed.” In the end, for the amount of organic fertilizer Shah says is needed, the price differential that the market is willing to pay doesn’t justify the conversion for most gardens.
Shah says he sells over 95% of his tea. “And I average higher average selling price than even Castleton, which is a prestige garden.” He attributes this to knowing his customer.
He also credits the terroir: “Looking at my estate, you wouldn’t think good tea grows here. The soil is rocky and rugged—in Mirik or Teesta Valley you have such beautiful green gardens, which make my garden look bad in comparison—but tea plants respond well to stress. And the tough conditions bring out the flavor compounds in the tea,” Shah says.
Finally, he wants to remain small. He is content being the owner of a family garden and has no ambitions to expand. Rather, he wants to create better and more interesting teas rather than get bigger.
“There are owners who want to create tea empires by buying up garden after garden. We take a different approach. We are content to remain how we are,” Shah says. “That doesn’t mean we don’t innovate. Every year, we try something new in response to customer needs. If you get stuck in the old way of thinking, you won’t progress as the tastes of your customers evolve. You try some oolong, you try some spiced teas, you try to make Bai Mudan White Tea… you experiment.”
For Shah, like his colleague RK Bansal, it’s all about passion. “Yes, we need to make money, but I don’t view this as an industrial venture. Giddapahar is a passion project; it is our Dharma—our religion; and we are always very positive about this. It makes us happy,” he says.
Indeed, Shah’s assertion demonstrates that the Arya Monk’s words when he looked down at the cup he was drinking and waved his other hand around pointing to the tea bushes, have proven to be prophetic. The most important lesson to be learnt from the non-colonial tea gardens is that tea is happiness! What was true for the tea-planting monks during the eighteen hundreds and continues through the 21st century.
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