Same-day sample pack

What you get

• Four 8g sachets — enough for two full gōngfū sessions per tea, or six Western brews

• A printed card with origin, harvest year, and a suggested water temperature for each tea

• Choice from eight rotating teas — currently two sheng, one shu, two oolong, one white, one yellow, one hong cha

• Hand-sealed pouches packed the morning of dispatch from our local depot

• Courier handoff within 1-2 hours inside the served zones — tracked from depot to door

• A QR slip linking to brewing notes from the curator who built your pack

• A €10 voucher toward a full 100g portion of any tea you keep coming back to

How the pack is built and how it lands

The same-day sample pack is the shortest distance between curiosity and a cup. You place the order, tell us in two lines what you are after — something darker than usual, an oolong you have not met, a flight for a friend who only knows English breakfast — and the curator on shift assembles four sachets from the current rotation of eight Chinese teas. Two hours later it is at your door.

The rotation changes every Monday. This week the board carries a 2018 shēng pǔ’ěr (生普洱) from a small Bulang Shan press near Menghai, its dry leaf still smelling of warm hay and pine bark; a 2012 shú pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) from a Kunming factory with the deep, settled sweetness of properly aged wòduī; a Wǔyí ròu guì (武夷肉桂) from the Zhèngyán core of the Wuyi cliffs, charcoal-roasted twice, with a cassia bark warmth in the finish; an Ānxī tiě guān yīn (安溪铁观音) in the modern green style, orchid on the wet leaf; a Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) from Fúdǐng in northern Fujian, picked early April, downy and pale; a Jūn Shān Yín Zhēn (君山银针) yellow tea from the island in Dòngtíng Lake; and two hóng chá — a Tóngmù zhèngshān xiǎozhǒng (正山小种) and a Dīan hóng from Fèngqìng in Yunnan with a malt-and-cocoa weight.

The curators — Fang Ting on the oolong and green side, Amgalan Chin on the aged and dark side — read the order brief before the sachets are filled. If you wrote “I drink a lot of coffee, looking for something with body,” you will likely get the shu, the rou gui, the Dian hong and the Tongmu. If you wrote “gift for someone who has only had bagged tea,” you get a gentler arc: silver needle, tie guan yin, Dian hong, shu. Nothing is automated. The four sachets are weighed, sealed, labelled, and placed in a flat kraft mailer with the brewing card and the voucher slip.

Dispatch leaves the depot in waves — every ninety minutes between 10:00 and 19:00 local. The courier is a standard bike or scooter operator in each city, briefed only to keep the parcel out of direct sun and not to stack it under heavier orders. You receive a tracking link the moment the rider collects.

When the pack lands, the printed card walks you through suggested ratios — 5g to 100ml for the oolongs and pu’er, 4g to 150ml for the white and yellow, leaf-first water-second for the hong cha. The infusion colour for the shu will read near-opaque mahogany by the second steep; the silver needle will sit pale champagne for far longer than feels right. We list the wet-leaf note to look for on each, so you have something to check your senses against.

If one of the four becomes a tea you want in quantity, the voucher applies to a 100g portion through the standard tea.taxi catalogue. If you want to go further — a full session with the curator, a Wuyi cliff-tea cohort, or a trip to the gardens themselves — the slip on the back of the card points you to tea.school for the cohorts and tea.travel for the origin visits. Members of tea.community get the rotation board a week ahead.

Who builds your pack

• Amgalan Chin — Curates the aged sheng and shu rotation — picks which presses are drinking well this week.

• Fang Ting — Handles the oolong, green and white side — rotates Wuyi, Anxi and Fuding selections weekly.

Practical notes

• Service area — Berlin (S-Bahn ring), Saint Petersburg (within KAD), London zones 1-2

• Order window — Monday to Saturday, 09:30 to 18:00 local — orders after 18:00 dispatch next morning

• Delivery time — 1-2 hours from order confirmation, tracked from depot pickup

• Pack contents — Four 8g sachets, brewing card, voucher slip — flat kraft mailer, fits a letterbox

• Customisation — Two-line brief at checkout — curator reads before sealing

• Storage — Cool, dry, away from coffee or spices — pu’er sachets keep six months, greens drink best within eight weeks

• Outside the zone — Standard 2-3 day shipping across EU and UK via the tea.taxi catalogue