Sea buckthorn tea is an infusion of the dried orange berries of Hippophae rhamnoides, a thorny shrub that grows wild in the cold river valleys of Lahaul and Spiti. It is caffeine-free and sharply sour, closer to a tart citrus than to tea. In Lahaul the berries are called Drilbu, and in Spiti, Chharma.
What is sea buckthorn tea?
Dried orange berries, steeped in hot water until the water turns amber. That is the whole thing.
The plant is a thorny shrub that colonises riverbeds and scree slopes above roughly 3,000 metres, in ground where very little else takes hold. It fixes nitrogen, holds thin soil together on slopes that would otherwise wash away, and produces a dense cluster of small orange berries in late summer.
The taste is the reason to drink it, and it surprises most people. Sharp, tart, closer to a sour citrus than to anything in the tea aisle. Not the mild herbal register of chamomile or the grassy note of green tea. It is a drink with an edge to it, which is why it does well with a spoon of honey and badly with milk.
In the valleys it is a winter drink. A jar of dried berries put up in October is what a household draws on through the cold months, long after the fresh fruit has gone.
What is Chharma, and what do they call it in Lahaul?
Chharma is the Spiti name. In Lahaul, where our berries come from, the same fruit is more often called Drilbu. You will also hear tsermang, and Leh berry across the border in Ladakh, and a handful of others depending on which valley you are standing in. These are the names the plant carries in its own country rather than ones applied from outside.
The names matter more than they used to. On 1 July 2026, Seabuckthorn (Chharma) of Spiti was granted a Geographical Indication tag, one of eight Himachal products registered together that month, alongside Mandi's Sepu Vadi and the Kinnauri Apple. That took the state's total from nine registrations to seventeen.
Is sea buckthorn tea made from leaves or berries?
Both exist, and most of what is written online muddles them badly. It is worth being clear, because the difference is not cosmetic.
Berry tea is made from dried fruit. It is tart, orange-amber in the cup, and it is what we sell as Dried Sea Buckthorn Berry.
Leaf tea is made from dried leaves. It is a different drink entirely: greener, grassier, far less sour, and closer in character to an ordinary herbal infusion.
The confusion has consequences. Almost every article on sea buckthorn tea attaches the fruit's nutritional figures to leaf tea, or the seed oil's fatty acid profile to either. Those are three different materials from one plant. Omega-7, the fatty acid sea buckthorn is best known for, is in the seed and pulp oil. It does not steep out into a cup of hot water from leaves or berries, because fat does not dissolve in water.
How do you brew the berries?
One heaped teaspoon of dried berries per cup, in water just off the boil rather than at a rolling boil. Steep for five to seven minutes.
You will find wildly different instructions elsewhere: one to three minutes on one page, eight to ten on another, fifteen on a third. Steeping past about ten minutes does not extract more flavour. It extracts more acid. The tartness goes flat and slightly bitter, and the amber turns dull. If your cup has come out harsh, you steeped it too long, not too short.
The berries will take a second steep and often a third, and the second cup is arguably the better one, with the sharpest edge taken off.
A spoon of honey suits it, and Himalayan Local Honey 100% Raw Maaun Bee Honey is the pairing we would use, stirred in once the cup has come off the boil rather than into boiling water. Milk does not work. The acidity will curdle it, and even where it does not, the flavour fights.
What do the vitamin C figures actually tell you?
Sea buckthorn is genuinely among the richer plant sources of vitamin C, but the published range is wider than the marketing suggests. Peer-reviewed figures run from around 53 to 1,550 mg per 100 g depending on subspecies and growing site. An orange sits at roughly 53. So the bottom of the sea buckthorn range is an orange, and the top is nearly thirty times one.
The fruit does hold its vitamin C unusually well in storage: unlike most fruit, sea buckthorn lacks ascorbinase, the enzyme that breaks ascorbic acid down.
Here is the part nobody selling this mentions. Vitamin C still degrades with heat and with time in hot water. What is in the fruit is not what ends up in your cup after seven minutes in near-boiling water, and we have not measured what does.
So we will put it plainly. Drink the tea for the taste, and for what it is. If your interest is the fruit's composition rather than the drink, the pulp is the honest answer, not an infusion.
Who picks the berries?
Palden Lamo, a women's Self Help Group in Lahaul, picks ours. They have supplied us for three years, which is as long as Himflavours has existed. They were among the first producers we bought from, and the relationship is older than most of what is on our shelves.
They work wild stands rather than plantations, on ground too broken for anything cultivated. Sea buckthorn is unpleasant to harvest. The shrub is armed with long thorns, and the berries are small, soft and burst if handled roughly. There is no mechanised way to do it on terrain like that. Every berry in the jar was taken by hand by a woman standing in a thorn thicket at 3,000 metres, which is most of what you are paying for.
The harvest runs from mid-August into October. Berries picked after the first frost are sweeter and easier to strip, which is why nobody in the valley is in a hurry to start early, whatever the buyers downstream would prefer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does sea buckthorn tea taste like? Sharp and distinctly sour, closer to a tart citrus than to a conventional tea. The cup runs orange-amber. There is no bitterness of the kind tannins give black or green tea, and no grassy note. Most people find it needs a little honey the first time and less thereafter.
Is sea buckthorn tea made from leaves or berries? Both are sold, and they are different drinks. Berry tea is made from the dried fruit and is tart and orange in the cup. Leaf tea is made from dried leaves and is greener, milder and far less sour. Most writing on the subject confuses the two, and attaches the fruit's figures to the leaf.
Does sea buckthorn tea contain caffeine? No. Sea buckthorn is not related to Camellia sinensis, the plant that black, green, white and oolong tea all come from, so neither the berries nor the leaves contain caffeine. Whether the infusion suits you late in the evening is a matter of taste rather than stimulation.
Does sea buckthorn from Himachal have a GI tag? Seabuckthorn (Chharma) of Spiti received Geographical Indication registration on 1 July 2026, in a batch of eight Himachal products that also included Mandi's Sepu Vadi and the Kinnauri Apple. It took Himachal Pradesh from nine registrations to seventeen. Our own berries are picked in Lahaul and we make no GI claim on them.
How many times can you steep the berries? Two comfortably, often three. The second steep is milder than the first and many people prefer it, since the hardest edge of the sourness has gone. Use water just off the boil each time and keep to five to seven minutes; longer does not extract more flavour, only more harshness.
By Vineet Sood
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