Nepal terroir

Wine has terroir – the place where the grapes grow shapes the character of the drink. Adaptogens work the same way. Altitude, climate, soil, air, neighbouring plants – all of it feeds into the biochemistry of the mushroom.

Our terroir is the Nepalese Himalayas. Dolpo, Mustang, Langtang. Altitude 4,000–4,500 metres. That's not just 'in the mountains'; that's in thin atmosphere where there's 40 % less oxygen than at sea level.

Altitude as a driver of biochemistry

At this altitude the mushroom develops more slowly and under harsher conditions. That's not a problem – it's exactly why we go there. Slow growth and environmental stress push the mushroom to concentrate its useful compounds more densely than at lower elevations.

Analogy: high-altitude tea is picked above lowland tea not because it's cheaper up there, but because the leaf is different.

A microclimate you cannot reproduce

Each Himalayan region has its own signature of temperatures, humidity, atmospheric pressure. Cordyceps from Dolpo differs biochemically from cordyceps from the neighbouring Mustang valley – you can tell in the colour, the aroma and the lab analyses.

None of this can be reproduced on a farm. Not the atmospheric pressure, not the solar spectrum, not the symbiotic context with the high-altitude microflora – none of it scales.

Why not Tibet, Bhutan or India

We focus on Nepal not out of some 'national cuisine' principle, but because we have our own harvesters there, our own routes and our own quality control. We can answer for what happened at the moment of harvest – rather than for whatever a middleman from a third country passed on to us.

One region, deep expertise, full control from soil to package.