Nepal Jun Chiyabari Black Tea

Jun Chiyabari, the Moonlit Tea Garden, is a small organic estate near Hile in the Dhankuta hills of eastern Nepal. Its founders call their teas high mountain teas rather than orthodox. The black tea is honeyed and floral. Brewed in a teapot at 94°C.

Origin & Story

Jun Chiyabari means Moonlit Tea Garden, jun being the Nepali word for moon. Two brothers, Lochan and Bachan Gyawali, started it in 2001 after a year of searching the hills of eastern Nepal, inspired by childhood memories of boarding school in Darjeeling, and they settled on the slopes around the small town of Hile, in Dhankuta district.

The garden lies about 200 kilometers east of Kathmandu and 100 kilometers west of Darjeeling, with its tea plots between roughly 1,650 and 2,100 meters. It has been organic since the first planting, was certified by IMO of Switzerland in 2012, and makes about 15,000 to 20,000 kilograms a year, which keeps it small. More than 200 local people work there, most of them women.

The founders do not call their tea orthodox. They prefer high mountain tea, and in 2003 they chose Taiwanese tea machinery on purpose, to set their style apart from Darjeeling's Indian-British methods. The garden makes white, green, partly oxidized and black teas, and exports most of them, with Germany its largest market.

Use water at about 94°C and 3 g of leaf for 240 ml, steep for three to four minutes in a teapot, and taste it plain. Sellers of Nepali black tea describe honeyed depth with stone fruit and floral notes.

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