Nepali Tea Traders began in 2012, founded by Maggie Le Beau — an American tea importer who saw what most of the Western tea world had overlooked. While Darjeeling held the spotlight just across the border, the small high-altitude gardens of Ilam, Nepal were quietly producing teas of remarkable smoothness and depth — and almost no one in the U.S. knew their names.

Maggie made the trips, built the relationships, and brought the first single-origin Nepali teas onto American tables. She championed a region the trade had long ignored, working directly with family-run estates rather than through brokers. That groundwork — the relationships, the standards, the commitment to single-origin sourcing — became the foundation everything we do today is built on.

Our teas come from Ilam, in eastern Nepal — a region of misty hills and high-altitude gardens sitting between 6,500 and 7,500 feet in the Himalayan foothills. The climate is cool, slow, and constantly shifting between sun and cloud. These conditions slow the plant's growth, concentrate flavor in the leaf, and produce the layered, never-bitter character that defines Nepali tea.

We work directly with family-run gardens in Ilam's Sandakphu region — many of them spanning multiple generations of the same family. No brokers in the middle, no large estates, no anonymous lots. Every tea we sell traces back to a specific farm, a specific harvest, and people we know by name.

Read more about why Ilam is Nepal's premier tea region →

• Gold — The Leafies International Tea Competition
• Best Black Tea — North American Tea Championship
• Featured in The New York Times' 2019 profile of Nepal as the next great tea origin

Awards matter to us less than the cups they came from. They're recognition of work done well — by the farmers who grow the leaves, by Maggie who started the work, and by every customer who's chosen Nepali tea over the more familiar names. We share them here because they help newcomers know the tea is worth a try.