Gopaldhara & Rohini Tea Estates

Gopaldhara traces to 1881, when a tea garden was cut into paddy fields owned by a farmer named Gopal, threaded by the small streams ("dhara" in Nepali) that gave the estate its name. The property changed hands several times in the early twentieth century before the Saria family bought it in 1953-54; generations later it is still run by the family, now under the Sona Tea Group banner alongside its sister garden, Rohini. Gopaldhara's plantings run from 5,500 to 7,000 feet, among the highest elevations worked for tea anywhere in Darjeeling, where the thin air and long ripening slow the leaf and concentrate its aromatics. Rohini, lower and younger, tops out around 4,400 feet at its Tukuriya division and fills out the range with earlier-picking, softer-character lots. Between the two gardens the estate turns out first and second flush black teas, whites, oolongs and specialty handcrafted lots, sold straight from the source rather than through a broker chain, with a separate international storefront handling orders outside India. For a house that has spent seven decades under one family's management, the range still centers on a simple claim: altitude and direct control over the leaf from bush to packet.