From Crisis to Revival: Tracing the Rebirth of the Selim Hill Tea Estate in the Heart of Darjeeling

This is the story of Selim Hill Tea Estate. Established in 1871, it is one of the oldest of the 87 heritage tea estates that carry the Darjeeling GI tag. But in 2020, emblematic of the crisis facing Darjeeling, Selim Hill too was on the verge of bankruptcy and collapse. This story gives you a glimpse of our journey to revive it.

Cover of 'Darjeeling: A History of the World’s Greatest Tea' by Jeff Koehler. The book captures the rich history and unique qualities of Darjeeling tea, symbolizing our commitment to reviving the tradition and legacy of this iconic beverage

Pictures from the Dominy family archive who managed Selim Hill until 1942. Courtesy Chris & Michele Dominy

      Pictures from the Dominy family archive who managed Selim Hill until 1942. Courtesy Chris & Michele Dominy

Understanding the Crisis

Our family has been in the tea estate business for the last 4 generations, managing tea estates in the Darjeeling, North Bengal, & Tripura region in North East India. Ever since 2017, Darjeeling’s tea industry has been facing a financial crisis, for 3 major reasons:

1. The political strikes of 2017 which lasted for 104 days led to tea estates in Darjeeling shutting down. During this time, the global demand for Darjeeling Tea in order to satiate itself decided to start purchasing lower priced, lower quality Nepalese Teas, which began flooding the market as ‘Darjeeling Tea.’ In recent years, it’s reported that only 1 in 5 cups of Darjeeling Tea come from the estates of Darjeeling. The rest are counterfeit ‘Darjeelings’ from neighbouring regions. While Champagne remains the most closely guarded GI tag, the Champagne of Teas has not had similar fortunes.
2. The over-reliance by producers on middlemen & MNCs meant that Darjeeling’s tea estate owners have historically been price takers, instead of price makers. There’s been no breakthrough brand that represents Darjeeling globally, in the way that Dilmah has come to represent Ceylonese Teas.
3. Climate Change has been inducing shorter harvest periods, erratic weather conditions (heatwaves in the monsoons, hailstorms in the summer), freak events like large scale forest fires due to the delay in the onset of Spring, as well as impacting the quality of our various seasonal harvests.

Within this context of crisis, when the pandemic hit in 2020, and lockdowns once again halted production in Darjeeling’s estates, the industry was at a breaking point. Most producers like us were staring at bankruptcy and collapse.

The Economist Explains - “Why Darjeeling tea may face extinction”

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Indeed, we too contemplated selling off our estate. That’s why we drove from Kolkata to Darjeeling in June, 2020, to big adieu to Selim Hill Tea Garden. Visiting the vast expanse of Selim Hill Tea garden, meeting the community once again, staring at the forest cover spreading up to 600 of the 1,000 acre that comprises the estate, and getting a glimpse of the hornbills overhead made us fall in love once again. Hence began our romantic endeavour to revive our family’s tea estate.

Step 1: Second Chance House

We realised that the first step to revive our estate involved living at the estate. We moved into the heritage bungalow at Selim Hill, rechristened it to Second Chance House— a moniker for the journey of revival we were undertaking. We are now the only estate owners who live at the tea garden in Darjeeling. This was the crucial first step, for it was the journey of starting to live here that made us more aware of the extent of the commercial and climate crisis facing Darjeeling’s estates.

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Step 2: Launching Dorje Teas