Why transparency matters

You are on a tea learning journey.

If you want to understand the impact of terroir on the taste of tea, you must be sure to have reliable information. Unfortunately, the world of high quality tea in China is not protected by the law.

You can sell cheap Pu-erh tea as Lao Ban Zhang (a very expensive village) or claim your teas are made of very old trees while, in reality, it comes from young plantations.

When asked about this issues, you’ll often be told: ‘buy from vendors you trust’

But how do you know who to trust?

Labels can be created to guarantee the origin of goods, such as is the case in the wine industry. Yet, geographic indications are not yet implemented in China, this is a massive effort that requires cooperation between the producers and proper enforcement. Even if geographic indications were created tomorrow, the Chinese consumers wouldn’t trust them.

In certain cultures, trust is given to strangers, while in others it has to be slowly built over time. Have you ever felt cheated by a friend? A family member? A company?
When trust is lost, it is hard to rebuild. Some people even only trust once. Those who have felt cheated multiple times might even lose the ability to trust and fall into cynicism.

If you choose to trust us, here is what we can provide:

We source tea from people we know, tea farmers we’ve visited during our exploration trips, some of them we’ve worked with for many years. We trust those farmers and rely on our expertise to assess their work before we put the teas up for sale.

We guarantee the quality of our teas, and our storehouse has a couple of boxes which we bought or produced, but which eventually didn’t live up to our standards.

During our trips, we came across delicious teas, but we couldn’t get accurate or reliable information regarding their origin.

All the teas on the website live up to our expectations and have something to say. You might not like all of them, taste is a subjective matter. What you like will change over time, as your taste buds become more acute, and your experience grows.

If you want to understand tea, it is important to have reliable information regarding where and how the tea was made.

Our product range can be confusing at the start, we don’t give fancy names to our teas and, instead, reference them according to their area of production: a specific mountain, village, or even down to the tea garden.

We do this because we know you’re interested in learning about the terroirs.

On our Youtube channel, you can find more information on the tea producing areas. This is a long adventure that will take you years to complete, if not a lifetime. We wish you a good journey and hope you’ll enjoy our selection!

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