This weekend I made a trip to a village called Dabaipani (Mineral Springs). It is 30 minutes drive from Darjeeling town, but I had to spend few days there to find what I was looking for.

This village consists of 14 hamlets widely spread across 1200 acres of hills. They are a part of the erstwhile Harrison’s and Mineral Springs Tea Estate, which closed down sometime in 1950.

Post 1950 the people survived selling: tea leaves to neighboring gardens, firewood, timber and charcoal from the garden reserve forest, which comprised about 600 acres of land. Post 1960 with the hope of the garden opening receding and the reserve forest depleting rapidly, the people started grabbing the land and started cultivating traditional food grains. The land grabbing was based on might so the people own anything from ½ acre to 12 acres of land.

The villages later organized themselves into Sanjukta Vikas Co-Operative (United Development Co-operative) with the intervention of a local NGO, DLR Prerna, The SVC has a two tier elected governance system with nominated members from the women’s self help groups in the Board.

Tea bushes had been retained partially when the people converted to traditional agriculture. A tie up between SVC and Tea Promoters India (TPI), a corporate body was facilitated by DLR Prerna. In this tie up, TPI manufactures and markets SVC tea in the international market, as an exclusive, small farmer co-operative, certified organic fair trade labeled tea. The tea is sold internationally as Mineral Springs Small Farmers Tea.

In 2001, SVC was granted producer organic certificate under ECC 2092/91(EU Standards), Naturland (German), Bio-Suisse (Swiss) and National Organic Program (USA). SVC is also certified under National Program for Organic Production (India).

Above all, the small tea farmers of Mineral springs have evolved the art of making exceptional standard hand made teas in their farms. It was arduous to visit every house hold in this region therefore this time I focused my trail in one of the hamlets which comprises of thirty homesteads. For this kind of a treasure hunt I will have to make several trips to these villages to find the best pickings.

This time I started very early in the morning so that I could meet the farmers before they could go off to their fields for the daily farm routines. Every house I visited offered me a great cup of tea. They have a certain pride in offering the teas and it is customary discipline to honor a guest this way. So by late evening I had sampled most of the farms, in the hamlet. It was difficult but the one that drew my interest was made by a farmer named Thuley Tamang.

The tea Thuley offered me is a rare treasure. Organic Hand made small farmer Oolong, I am going to name this tea as “Mango Tree Oolong”, because the hamlet it originates from is called “Aap Botay” which is a nepali derivative for a Mango Tree. The dry leaves are chunky and acquire a purple bloom. The aroma of the dry leaves is flowery with a woody undertone.