Bermiok Farms

Project Róngkup - from the lands of the Lepchas.

This year we commenced a new project in our journey to building sustainable rural communities in our Kangchenjunga foothills.

Rongkup, which translates to ‘beloved children of God’, are the indigenous inhabitants of Sikkim and North Bengal (Darjeeling, Kalimpong) extending into Bhutan and Nepal. Popularly known as the Lepchas, historically they are a nomadic tribe that lived in thick jungles and today numbers less than 100,000 in population. A unique and multi-talented race, they are known for their deep and instinctive knowledge of forest farming, foraging and plant life, including medicinal herbs.

An aspiration behind our endeavours is to highlight the cultures of the remote communities of our region and positively impact their livelihoods while helping to preserve the fragile eco-systems that they live in. There is a fine balance between development and sustainable upliftment that we are acutely conscious about.

It’s also a race against rampant urbanisation and vote banking policies that destroy our natural heritage and the age old cultures and wisdom that the modern world is often quick to dismiss.

The faster we equip such communities with ways to secure their livelihood whilst maintaining their culture, the more of this we can preserve for our future generations.

With project Róngkup, we hope to offer the coffee industry beans grown by our remote Lepcha communities. A rare produce that will seek to highlight the cultures of the unique people of our region.

Watch this space as we take you through our journey..

In Pic: Labi-Sardong, North Sikkim

Saa, a 100% Sikkim Breakfast Tea!

What is a breakfast tea?
Inspired by the hearty English breakfast, the tea accompaniment was designed to be full-bodied, robust and rich and go well with milk and sugar.

Getting colour and body from leaf teas without it getting overtly astringent is a challenge. So leaf from various terroirs and styles is used to create this tea.

While there are various interpretations of the English breakfast tea, the classic blends comprised Assam, Ceylon, Kenyan and Chinese teas.

We do favour the classics but are also in love with our own unique origin! The goal in creating our version was to remain completely indigenous and avoid the chemical and fluoride heavy CTC and other mainland teas that are blended for strength in chai styled teas.

We develop our breakfast tea as an artful blend of the clonal and assamica cultivars on our estate, and a combination of various tea styles and grades.

From the fruity malty character of our autumnal fully oxidised tea to the smoky florals of our roasted spring oolong tea, Saa delivers an authentic breakfast tea experience that is single origin, single estate, organic and 100% leaf.

As a small garden our quantities are limited. Outlets stocking Saa in Gangtok include:
MG Market @ Gupta Tea House
DC Court
Bhojogari
Daragaon, Metro @ Himalayan Fresh

Also available for nation-wide shipping. Order via DM.

This is the season for mugs of breakfast tea. Stock up and enjoy!

Light, bright, pure and fresh!

“ For us at the Bermiok Tea Estate, our affairs with the year’s teas begin with the delicate and tender spring harvest. The pale golden hue with its fresh, brisk and floral notes gets us weak-kneed every year. Even as the seasons progress and we fall in love with different teas, we never forget this one... after all, our first flush is our first love! “

First Flush Teas from the Spring 2023 harvest are now on shelves in .

We have limited batches so please stock up if our first flush is your first love as well!

Available at Gupta Tea House, MG Road and Himal Tea Shop, Thaaro baato. A few more outlets will get their stock later this month.

In our every endeavour and with all the challenges we face in creating quality products from our small rural enterprise, one of our goals has always been to make a remote region known and our community proud.

Today, when internationally renowned fine tea purveyors are selecting our teas for their catalogue alongside legacy gardens and legendary tea makers from across the world, we know our audacious vision may not be entirely unattainable.

But we have often mused that some of the best of what we create is never experienced by our community. Such batches get picked quickly from overseas and its prices are rarely feasible for local sale.

That was until now. When recently opened its doors, it was a breath of fresh air for us. A space that spoke our language, with a focus on quality and authenticity that felt as commited as ours.

We are delighted that there are now two of our exclusive teas that the team at S’yuoCha are brewing for you:

A singular cultivar black tea from the first pluck of our First Flush 2023,
A new uniquely crafted Spring Jasmine Green Tea that we denied our overseas buyers this time so it could be launched first here, for our local patrons.

We thank you for your support and hope you enjoy these special teas.

Sampling and profiling new micro lots from our small farmers in South Sikkim.

The varietal, terroir and processing methods all greatly impact the quality and personality of a coffee.

The cultivation, post harvest management and processing in our region are still in its nascency. That means it is notoriously difficult working with local produce given this stage of our development. Irregular moisture, unsorted and ungraded beans are the least of the challenges we face!

Yet we persevere, because we know that we did not get into this industry to churn out a regular product.

We also know from our experience, that inspite of the many challenges in farming and processing in our difficult terrains and harsh climate, there is an innate distinctive quality and brilliance in anything borne from the soil of our unique Himalayan region.

Have a great weekend!

During a short period of the year, the conditions are perfect for these pure chemical-free berries 🍓to be grown into the juiciest most potent fruit.

This season our window was small. The strange weather and extreme temperature variations we had, hampered our plants’ ability to give us her best for the entire season.

We are now giving them an early break. Weather permitting, we will coax a few more grade A flushes out of them yet.

In the meanwhile, you can grab the last of the stock for now at and .

For those who have been asking for our preservative-free strawberry jams, they’re back on the shelves at these same outlets with more to follow.

Thank you for your support.

The March begins…

Coffee 101 - training for a women’s cooperative.

As we have mentioned before, coffee is a product of nature. Over centuries, like tea, its cultivation has become a science with well documented research and best practice in field management and processing.

An unhealthy coffee plant could still fruit for 3 to 7 years before one starts witnessing die-backs and dangerous infestations of leaf rust, blight and borers. These can kill not just one plant but wipe out the crop of a village, and even an entire region.

We have already suffered this with other cash crops in our Kangchenjunga foothills.

Growers need to understand the criticality of good plant management from the beginning, so that our nascent and tiny coffee sector does not suffer the same fate and so that what we sow now we can reap into the next generation.

There are three basic points we feel worth sharing for anyone in our region seeking to grow coffee :

1. Avoid planting Arabica varieties under 3,000 feet and without adequate shade planning as this species is more susceptible to disease and has low tolerance to heat.
2. Resist using fallen cherries to propagate new seedlings as these carry inherent deformities. Use seeds of only ripe cherries picked from plants that are =/> 8 years old (and that are in optimum health).
3. Organic farming of coffee requires good discipline in field management as the diseases are too powerful for quick natural remedies. Every farmer is responsible for everyone’s crop as your infestation today will become everyone’s tomorrow.

Any questions please drop us a DM. We will be sharing more information going forward from our own experiences, our mistakes and our discoveries!

Our garden gave us our first small round of spring harvest today.

While we had pre-decided to make a batch of sun dried oolong tea, it was serendipitous that there was an unmistakeable sweet fragrance that was floating over the garden today. The Jasmine plants that we have been cultivating were in full bloom!

Great things happen when women come together and call the shots 🙋🏻‍♀️! So after a quick discussion the girls decided that today would be a good day to make Bermiok’s first jasmine oolong tea.

While one team went about crafting the oolong, the others picked the pink jasmine flowers and set them for the natural drying process.

Handmade by our women from plucking to processing with our estate grown organic flowers and tea, an inaugural lot will be available for retail soon.

Happy International Women’s Day!

For whom size matters.

Bermiok Berry XLs.

- Children’s Park and Daragaon outlets.

Bermiok Berry luxe series …
for whom the carat, colour, clarity and cut matter 😉

Available with Fresh24 at Daragaon.

Your foot prints, our true North
Your ideals, our mission
Your aspirations, our goals
Your life, our proud legacy

We lost our founder, Mr Tashi Densapa also known as the Bermiok Rinpochè on 13 November 2021.

As a Buddhist reincarnate, a learned scholar, a government servant and a scion of the distinguished Bermiok Densapa family of Sikkim, he was by no means an ordinary human being. But he rejoiced in living life simply, humbly, with meaning and always with deep honesty.

His compassion and his wisdom over a lifetime in service has touched the lives of many people from all walks of life. His untimely passing leaves a void that cannot be filled.

Coffee is a product of nature. It involves cultivation, cultivars, soil conditions, precipitation, sun, wind, altitude and many other factors that make their specific mark on the coffee. The indelible mark is the people of the coffee’s origin...their cultures, way of life and farming practices.

Our Kangchenjunga foothills is a unique region teeming with rich biodiversity and natural heritage and a confluence of Himalayan cultures.

Our goal is to bring all of this together and develop coffees with character that highlight what we believe is our unique terroir.

Our mission, which is shared with our venture, is to achieve a sustainable value chain that ensures quality and purity from crop-to-cup, and enriches the livelihoods of the rural communities we engage around our boutique hill enterprise.

Coffee is a journey we have barely begun and at the outset of our 2021-22 harvest season, we thank our friends and early patrons for their support and encouragement. We hope to make many new friends and delight new patrons in this coming year!

Our medical teams at the Covid wards are not only our front line, but also our last frontier of hope; for it is when the virus defeats us at our homes that we go to them to be saved.

Yesterday, we gifted the team at STNM Hospital a tea & coffee machine and the gallant youth of Sikkim Aakraman Football Club supplied freshly baked cookies from Yeti Bakery along with other food items.

A small gesture from us but we hope it helps to lift the team’s morale. At these times when they may often be feeling distressed, frustrated and exhausted.

We want our medical teams to know that they have our respect for the risks they are taking, our sympathy for the sacrifices they are making and our gratitude for courageously carrying out their duties in such difficult conditions.

Let’s support our in any way we can.





bakery

Time for some Strawberry therapy..

You begin the day with picking pure ripe strawberries. After rinsing, you dice each one, releasing its fresh aromatics.
You put it on the fire and stir it slowly, rhythmically... controlling the amount of heat and letting it cook in its own juice.

You forget the sad state of affairs, your worries, the tragedies around you, and immerse yourself into this moment.

And when you think the aromas couldn’t get any more intense, you feel like you are floating in a fragrance that is so sweet that it takes you back to your youth and that tingling sensation of first love.. ‘Hatsukoi no Kaori’ ( 初恋の香り) they say in Japan and even name a strawberry as such.

Standing in a spot of sunshine and watching the caramelisation makes it all the more therapeutic.

Stay safe, eat healthy, be present.

A moment with Mom.

What a time the mothers in this world have been going through. From keeping their homes and families safe, being care givers to their elders, educating their children and many who are also working… and so many who are on the frontline today.

While today maybe their day, they deserve to be cherished every day.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Now you can also enjoy our 2021 spring harvest teas.

The freshest of pure whole leaf organic First Flush teas are out now.

A limited stock is available with your tea stores in and online with and

Get your bag/s of “this season’s” fresh goodness and .