News & Blog

I’ve had this video for a while, of a talk that Lim Ping Xiang gave in Kunming last spring in a small teahouse in Kunming. One of the regulars in the teahouse filmed it and gave me a copy of the video. Kathy & I worked a bit over the Christmas period and subtitled the […]

I thought I’d share this documentary showing Master Huang and his sons making Wuyi Yancha. His eldest son (Shen Hui) gives much of the commentary, but Master Huang can be seen with his sons, workers and some of their old trees from 35:00 to 38:50. Unfortunately there are no English subtitles, and there doesn’t seem […]

The prices achieved in Chinese tea auctions for antique puerh teas never cease to amaze me. Like with wine or whiskey, it seems there is almost no limit to the prices that some people will pay for the rarest of the rare. A friend sent me a link this morning to a recent Chinese tea […]

As you’ve no doubt noticed, we have a new website. This is the product of much of my summer’s work. It’s amazing how long these things take. Hopefully the website will be a bit simpler to use, and display perfectly no matter what device or browser you happen to be using. As with all computer […]

We’ve had some enquiries from customers as to the meaning of the calligraphy on our wrappers this year. Each year, we keep it in the backs of our minds that we’ll need some new wrappers for the coming Spring’s puerh tea cakes. When Master Lim visited us last Summer to give talks in Postcard teas […]

After a long wait, our shipping container has finally arrived back in the UK, along with all of our new pressings from this Spring. Our house is filled with boxes upon boxes of tea and we’re slowly but steadily working through packing up all the orders from people who preordered our tea this Spring. Thank […]

For quite some time, I’ve been wondering how to make the act of giving integral to The Essence of Tea and use it for some good in the world. I had a meeting with our accountant yesterday. He’s very good at thinking a little out of the box and of coming up with new approaches […]

I thought I’d post a few pictures from our trip to Wuyishan this Spring. They show some of the stages of hand-processing Wuyi Yancha. It was particularly dry this year, so Master Huang opted to have a kettle constantly boiling in the withering room to increase the humidity in the air and allow the leaves […]

It’s been a very interesting, exciting and exhausting couple of months, but I’ve finally made it back to the UK. Our trip this Spring included several weeks in Yunnan, visiting some tea mountains and sourcing our new season’s puerh teas, a trip to Wuyishan to drink tea and learn more from Master Huang and his […]

Well it’s that time of year again. We’ve been having a lot of fun in Yunnan, sifting the good from the bad and trying to find some special teas to press and bring back to the UK. Our cakes are (mostly) all pressed and we’re almost ready to begin the annual preorder process. I’ve been […]

It seems there’s no end of “Kings” of puerh tea trees. Every area seems to have it’s own ‘Cha Wang’ (Tea King). The trees are big, old and invariably over picked. Their leaves sell for tens of thousand RMB/kg, sometimes hundreds of thousands so, despite all efforts to protect them, there’s plenty of incentive for […]

As the winter comes to a close, we’re in the midst planning our Spring trip to Yunnan to source and press our 2013 Puerh tea cakes. This season always leaves us a little stretched – both financially & also in terms of space in our storeroom once the boxes of tea begin arriving back to […]