Tea Cultivation in Bhutan

Tea cultivation in Bhutan is a small, recently revived industry rather than a mass commodity sector. The country sits between two of the most important historical tea regions of the eastern Himalaya — Darjeeling and the Assam Duars — and Bhutanese soils, altitudes and climate are well suited to Camellia sinensis. Yet large-scale plantation tea developed on the southern side of the present international border, in the Bengal and Assam Duars that were ceded to British India after the Duar War, rather than within modern Bhutan. Domestic tea production is now concentrated at a single cooperative in Trongsa Dzongkhag, with smaller plots in Samtse, Sarpang and Tsirang.^[1]

The most documented Bhutanese tea operation is the Samcholing tea cooperative, located in the village of Samcholing in Trongsa Dzongkhag at around 1,800 metres above sea level. Bushes there descend from Darjeeling seed planted in the 1950s by the Second King, Jigme Wangchuck, around his summer palace, and were converted to commercial production from 2011 onwards with technical assistance from the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and the Bhutanese Ministry of Agriculture. The cooperative covers roughly 43 acres of working tea garden and operates a micro-factory that produces small lots of green tea — typically a few hundred kilograms of fresh leaf per harvest.^[2]

Bhutanese tea production is therefore measured in hundreds of kilograms of finished tea, not in the thousands of tonnes that characterise neighbouring Assam or Darjeeling. The export footprint is correspondingly limited: Samcholing's output is sold mostly through Bhutanese retailers and a small number of specialist importers in Europe and North America, with green tea the dominant style.^[3]

Historical Background

The British East India Company first attempted to introduce Chinese tea seed into Bhutanese territory in 1774, when Warren Hastings sent a package of seed with the diplomatic mission of George Bogle to the court of Druk Desi Zhidar's successor. The experiment did not establish a tea industry. Large-scale plantation tea developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in the duars — the strip of low Himalayan foothills running along the southern border — but this development took place after the duars passed under British control. Under the Treaty of Sinchula of 1865, signed at the conclusion of the Duar War, Bhutan ceded the eighteen Bengal and Assam Duars to British India in return for an annual subsidy. The new tea estates of Jalpaiguri and the West Bengal Duars therefore grew up on land that had been Bhutanese territory only a few years earlier, but they did not extend back into Bhutan after annexation.^[4]

Inside the kingdom, tea remained a minor crop. Bhutan's Second King experimented with Darjeeling seed at his summer palace in Samcholing in the early to mid twentieth century, and small plots of tea were planted in southern Bhutan over the course of the 1950s and 1960s. None developed into a commercial industry of any size before independence-era policy began to encourage agricultural diversification.^[1]

Modern Production

The current Bhutanese tea industry is built on the Samcholing operation in Trongsa, established formally as a cooperative from 2011 with KOICA support. The cooperative is run by a group of village women and processes its own leaf at a small on-site factory, producing primarily green tea. Output is reported in the range of several hundred kilograms of finished tea per year, depending on weather and labour availability. Plantings in the southern dzongkhags — Samtse, Sarpang and Tsirang — are smaller and are mostly used for domestic consumption and farmer-cooperative marketing rather than industrial processing.^[2]

Bhutan does not maintain a large tea-export industry comparable to those of Assam, West Bengal or Sri Lanka, and government planning documents have generally treated tea as a niche, value-added agricultural product rather than a commodity. The Royal Government's Twelfth and Thirteenth Five-Year Plans encourage organic and high-altitude specialty tea as part of broader diversification away from a dependence on hydropower and tourism, but the scale envisaged is modest.^[5]

Domestic Tea Culture

Although commercial tea cultivation is small, tea consumption is central to Bhutanese daily life. The traditional suja — salted butter tea churned with yak butter and salt — is drunk widely in central and northern Bhutan, while sweet milk tea (ngaja) prepared in the Indian style is the standard offering in homes and offices. Imported teas, mostly from Assam and Darjeeling, account for the bulk of the leaf consumed; domestic Samcholing tea and the smaller Bhutanese herbal tea brands occupy a specialty niche aimed at the domestic urban market and at visitors.^[6]

References

1. Samcholing Tea Bhutan — Cooperative website
2. Bhutan Samcholing — Camellia Sinensis tea house notes
3. Thunder Dragon Green Tea, Bhutan — In Pursuit of Tea
4. Dooars — Wikipedia (Western Duars and tea history)
5. Tea in Bhutan — Discovering Tea
6. How to make your own Bhutanese suja — Daily Bhutan