Makaibari Darjeeling tea, India
136 images Created 7 Mar 2010
"We give our tea plantation constant and natural assistance with biodynamic techniques. One look at our land, even to the unschooled eye, will show a forest teeming with wildlife and plant life, a bounty of the sky with butterflies and birds, and all these synergistic life forces show up in the cup."
-Rajah Banerjee.
More British than the British themselves is the flamboyant owner of the sprawling Makaibari tea estate, Swaraj Banerjee, better known as Rajah Banerjee. Rajah's great grandfather, G.C. Banerjee, founded this estate in Kurseong, Darjeeling during the British Raj on the 1840s. Four generations down, Rajah is renowned for his transformation of Makaibari into the world's first biodynamic tea estate, and is one of the few estate owners who actually live on the estate and walks it daily, dressed in his signature khaki safari jacket and Jodhpurs. This charming, intensely tea-passionate Rajah is also responsible for a long list of visionary accomplishments in the industry that includes putting women as the leaders in the estate communities and leading Makaibari to produce some of the most expensive teas in the world. Their creation, the Silver Tips Imperial is the current World Record holder as the most expensive tea auctioned.
Here, we follow Rajah and his team as they produce the Muscatel Second Flush, a tea that fetches high premiums, as it is processed from bush to teacup.
-Rajah Banerjee.
More British than the British themselves is the flamboyant owner of the sprawling Makaibari tea estate, Swaraj Banerjee, better known as Rajah Banerjee. Rajah's great grandfather, G.C. Banerjee, founded this estate in Kurseong, Darjeeling during the British Raj on the 1840s. Four generations down, Rajah is renowned for his transformation of Makaibari into the world's first biodynamic tea estate, and is one of the few estate owners who actually live on the estate and walks it daily, dressed in his signature khaki safari jacket and Jodhpurs. This charming, intensely tea-passionate Rajah is also responsible for a long list of visionary accomplishments in the industry that includes putting women as the leaders in the estate communities and leading Makaibari to produce some of the most expensive teas in the world. Their creation, the Silver Tips Imperial is the current World Record holder as the most expensive tea auctioned.
Here, we follow Rajah and his team as they produce the Muscatel Second Flush, a tea that fetches high premiums, as it is processed from bush to teacup.
