4 photos from my trip to Jiangsu, Sunday tea class, & other exciting updates

+ heads-up about a small Thanksgiving sale!

Dear tea friends,

As some of you may know, about a month ago, I took a 2-week whirlwind trip to Jiangsu, China! Here’s a map for context:

The closest big city to Jiangsu is Shanghai, to the south. PC: iStock by Getty Images

And here are a few photos from my trip:

A friend’s family’s tea garden near Tianmu Lake. All the tea bushes you could see in 360 degrees were theirs.

My good friend Luyao’s smaller backyard tea garden in her 老家 (laojia, family’s old country house)

Any guesses as to how much tea can be made from what you see in this photo?

My friends & I got to try making a 100% handmade clay teapot in Yixing, home of the famous zisha teapot! We are waiting for our teapot to be fired & shipped.

If you’d like to hear more stories from the trip, and taste 2 green teas from Jiangsu among other new (and old) teas I picked up along the way, I’m hosting another omakase tea tasting this Sunday 11/24! This will probably be our last small-group tea tasting event for 2024. Every tea class includes different teas and tea conversations, but the spirit of sharing and friendship is always the same. As always, if you’d like to attend, please feel free to make any tea suggestions in the “order comments.”

A New Partner

PC: Page & Leaf Cafe

Congratulations to Page & Leaf Cafe at Porter Square which just opened today! Among other wonderful beverages on their menu, you can enjoy a pot of some of our teas there as well, including our house-roasted 2023 Osmanthus Red, 2024 Honey Orchid, 2001 Plum Beauty, and 2023 Yuja Peel.

Online Store

• Our Dark Honey is a relatively light-oxidized and light-roasted black tea; one of the reasons it is part of our curation is its potential for aging. The 2023 vintage has aged nicely over the past year, acquiring some additional richness and depth. We are keeping it on the shelf until the end of November, before pulling it to age ourselves until some future time. If you’d like to restock this vintage, please buy it before the end of this month.

• 2024 Dark Honey is now available! Take 15% off the new vintage with code NEWDH15, available until the end of Sunday.

• Our aged oolongs recently got a shout-out on the Leafhopper tea blog! The blurb about us is in the paid part of the blog, but a friend kindly forwarded it to me:

  

  I also wrote up a little FAQ on aged oolongs, for those who are curious to learn more.

A Small Thanksgiving Sale

I’ll be adding a new tea or two + some modern & vintage teaware to the site ahead of our Thanksgiving sale, which will start next week-ish! Here’s a sneak preview:

More soon!

As always, thank you so much for reading and for your support.

-Yin