Hand Made Organic White Teas from the Land of the Buddha

The area where we have our plantation is called Pothia; it is a small place, in a district called Kishanganj. Kishanganj in turn belongs to the state of Bihar in India. Bihar happens to be the poorest and most backward state of India, deprived of any privilege. So our teas are from Bihar — a region new to tea, where we are the pioneers.

Our plantation is 8 years old. The bushes are all newly planted. The area was not very good for normal vegetative crops as the place did not retain water for a long time. Mr. Rajiv Lochan, the managing director and the CEO of Lochan Tea Limited and Doke Organic Farm decided to give it a try and the area turned out to be very productive, giving better yields per hectare than most of the areas of India that are producing tea.

In addition, the “green leaf percentage” was very high in our production. Green leaf percentage means the amount of bud present in 100g of fresh picked leaves. Normally the % is 10 to 20 % but in our case it was as high as 40 to 50% at times. This was quite unbelievable but nevertheless it was true. After a lot of thinking and effort, we knew we were digging a goldmine. This high % of tips meant that our raw green leaf supported white tea and this soil, temperature and growing conditions were best for white tea.

We decided to switch, and here we stand today, making hand crafted white teas. Our garden was never exposed to chemicals; we kept it organic from the very first day. We are in dialogue with certification administrators and will soon be getting our official organic certification.