Weekly sample subscription

What you get

• Four 12g sealed pouches each week — enough for three to four gōngfū sessions per tea

• A printed slip with origin, harvest year, and suggested water temperature for every sample

• A rotating selection touching white, green, yellow, oolong, sheng pu’er, and shu pu’er across the month

• Tracked dispatch every Monday morning from the Berlin fulfilment room

• Pause, skip, or change cadence from the account page — no phone call needed

• Access to a private notes thread where curators answer questions about that week’s teas

• First refusal on full 100g portions of any sample, at the standard catalogue price

A weekly cross-section, posted Monday

The subscription is not a session you sit down to — it is a rhythm. Every Monday, four small kraft pouches leave the Berlin fulfilment room, each holding 12g of leaf, each labelled with origin, year of harvest, and the water temperature that suits it best. By Wednesday in most EU cities, by Friday in the further corners of the UK, the envelope is in your hands.

The selection rotates across a four-week cycle. One week leans toward the soft end of the spectrum — a Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) from Fúdǐng in northern Fujian, a Huò Shān Huáng Yá (霍山黄芽) from the Dàbié mountains in Anhui, a green from a cooperative outside Hángzhōu, and a kettle-friendly hóng chá from Tóngmùguān. The next week pulls toward fire and age — a medium-roast Tiě Guān Yīn (铁观音) from Ānxī, a charcoal-finished Dà Hóng Páo (大红袍) from the Wǔyí cliffs, a 2019 sheng cake fragment from Yìwǔ, and a loose shu from the Menghai factory’s 2021 production. The two intervening weeks fill the gaps — yellow buds, lighter oolongs, single-mountain sheng, shorter-aged shu.

What the small format does is teach pace. Twelve grams is enough for three or four gōngfū sittings — one to find the tea, one or two to know it, one to test what you have learned. The wet leaf of a Yìwǔ sheng, opening over four steeps from a tight green-black bud cluster into a flat, supple sheet the colour of olive bark, tells you something only repetition reveals. A Bái Háo Yín Zhēn brewed once in glass and once in porcelain shows its two faces — pale straw on the first pour, then a deeper apricot when the second steep is held longer than instinct says it should be.

The printed slip is deliberately short. Origin, year, suggested temperature, one line of context. The curators — Chen Hui Yi for the white, yellow, and green choices, Fang Ting for the oolong rotation — keep their notes restrained so the tea does the talking. Longer essays on each origin live on thetea.app, where subscribers can pull up the full producer write-up if they want it.

The private notes thread is where the subscription opens up. Members post their infusion observations, ask about water, compare brews. Chen Hui Yi or Fang Ting answer through the week. Subscribers also get priority on cohort tastings run on tea.events — when a new Wǔyí lot arrives, the comparison flight is offered to the subscription list first.

Pausing is one click. Skipping a week, switching to fortnightly, changing the delivery address for a holiday — all from the account page. The fulfilment team needs the change in by Saturday evening for the Monday dispatch. After that, the envelope is already labelled.

The arc is not in any single week. It is across a season — three months of small pouches, twelve weeks, forty-eight teas, a map of Chinese tea built slowly enough to remember each leaf.

Who curates the rotation

• Chen Hui Yi — Curates the white, yellow, and green selections — Fúdǐng silver needles to Huò Shān yellow buds.

• Fang Ting — Chooses the oolong rotation each week — Ānxī, Wǔyí, and the occasional Phoenix single-bush.

How it runs

• Cadence — Weekly, dispatched Monday morning from Berlin

• Format — Four 12g sealed pouches per envelope, kraft outer, labelled

• Delivery window — Berlin & EU 2–4 days · UK 3–6 days · Saint Petersburg 5–8 days

• Pause / skip — Self-serve from account page — changes by Saturday 20:00 CET

• First week — Curator’s choice across all six categories — a baseline read

• Cancel — Anytime, no minimum term — outstanding week ships then stops

• Gifting — Pre-paid 4-week and 12-week gift runs available at /gift