Our teas are from people and places we know. The reason I travel is to learn more about tea directly from the small family producers we work with. In my experience it is these smaller producers who make the best tea and do the most to protect both the local environment and the local tea traditions. We are concerned that ancient tea culture and heritage is under threat in Asia from ever larger tea farms and factories. By buying our teas you can help small scale traditional tea production and culture survive.  

The majority of our tea farmers use natural farming methods and these we have distinguished by putting an asterisk after the tea's name. Many are far too small for organic certification to be economically variable. Furthermore as most of our producers get a premium price locally for their tea because of its quality, they are usually uninterested in international certification for export. We always pay the prices set by them. When we find tea growers whose tea quality, ethics and environmental philosophy match our own ideals we establish long-term partnerships. The growers benefit from a good steady annual income from us and we benefit by being offered their very best teas. Postcard Teas also works with some of these producers to make financial contributions to the local communities. In India, we support the work of Doke Estate’s educational foundation and David Earp’s charity Shuktara, and in Sri Lanka we have helped Handunugoda Estate to buy boats for the local fishing village devastated by the tsunami in 2004 and have made regular contributions to a workers' sinking fund.

My first tea travel was to the famous Japanese tea town of Uji in 1993 but it was visiting the mountains around Pin Lin in Taiwan a couple of years later that made me want to work within the tea industry. The misty mountain setting perfectly suited the teas I had come to see being made and from that time onwards, I have wanted to visit and work with the best small estates and master tea makers in Asia.

I hope the photographs and descriptions from my tea travels make you want to try some of the wonderful teas we import and maybe to travel and discover these very special tea cultures on your own or with us in the future.

Timothy d'Offay

 

INDIA

ASSAM, DARJEELING, AND THE NILGIRI MOUNTAINS

Kolkata is the gateway to India's two greatest tea growing areas, Assam and Darjeeling. Despite its depressing reputation, it is a city filled with culture, humour, glorious green spaces and more tea estates offices than anywhere else in the world. The Bengali chai called "cha", just like they say in China, is addictive and a hard habit to break. Postcard Teas'  Garam Assam Chai used to be blended by me before I discovered the delicious chai blended in West Bengal that we sell today.

The most romantic way to travel to Darjeeling is by train, ideally on the "Darjeeling Mail" Sleeper to New Jalpaiguri.  From here one can take the famous steam train or bounce up the mountain to the tea estates in a jeep. Many people like to stay in the heritage hotels in Darjeeling town but if you love tea remember that several of the estates also offer accommodation. Goomtee, one of the estates we have long worked with, has delightful rooms in the owner, Ashok Kumar's bungalow. Goomtee and its neighbour Jungpana are friendly, family-run estates which are world-renowned for their very special naturally produced Second Flush Darjeelings. If you are staying at an estate for several days to learn about tea production, why not try hand producing a little tea. I hand made an oolong style tea at Glenburn on a trip to Darjeeling in 2003, a hobby I continue whenever I can on tea travels.

Assam is wild. Rhinos, leopards, kidnappers and separatists. Ken Pringle, the CEO of Tata-Tetley Tea, the world's largest tea company, once visited our store and we reminisced about both our recent trips to Assam. When he talked about travelling to Tata's estates accompanied "night and day by fourteen armed bodyguards", I felt lucky to have enjoyed anonymity. An anonymity that allows one to walk through estates alone or with tea pickers who would show you the tracks of wildlife that had just passed or identify the birds in the trees planted to shade the tea bushes. The luminosity of fireflies that light up the Second Flush season skies is incredible and their beauty seems reflected in the gold flecked tippy teas produced in Assam at that time of year. Mangalam that produces the most prized golden tipped Second Flush Assam teas from its exclusive P126 clonal tea trees is, by happy coincidence, owned by the mother of our marvelous cake maker Pratibha of L'Amour Encore. 

 

SRI LANKA

GALLE, UVA, AND NUWARA ELIYA

Handunugoda is a small tea estate near Mirissa not far from Galle in the south of Sri Lanka. The south is not as famous for its teas as the upland teas of Uva, Dimbula, and Nuwara Eliya but several of the southern tea estates produce fine Sri Lankan black teas - balanced and sweet, reminiscent of light Assam teas. Handunugoda's owner Herman Gunaratne worked for foreign tea companies before returning to his family's land. As well as stocking some of his excellent teas, we have worked together over the years to produce innovative teas like our Coffee Blossom Tea and an aged Vanilla Tea which we should start selling later this year.

Handunugoda is less than a mile from the Indian Ocean and visiting the estate in the summer of 2004 I remember the picturesque local fishing villages along the coast. The tsunami later that year destroyed these communities and although no one from the estate died, they all had friends or relatives killed in the catastrophe. Herman helped by employing some of those too traumatised to return to living by the sea, and we helped financially to provide new boats for the local fishermen. Revisiting the estate and the surrounding area in 2006, much of the damage had been repaired and there was large scale building works for many of those on the coast left homeless. Outwardly everyone was getting back to normal and getting on with their lives but living with the memories and consequences of December 26th 2004 must require incredible inner strength and courage.

 

 JAPAN

UJI, NISHIO, SHIZUOKA, AND KYUSHU

Some years before I studied in Japan, I was given a Japanese tea ceremony bowl by my father. Simple and austere, it introduced me to a different kind of aesthetic. Arriving in Kyoto, my first contact with tea was learning how to be a good tea ceremony guest at Mushanokoji Senke, one of the three main tea schools. Every month I would join others who had been studying the art of being a good guest for years.  Although my attendance of these classes lasted less than a year, my memories besides the exquisite garden and tea rooms of Mushanokoji Senke are of the dedication and humility of both the teachers and the students.

A love of learning and a belief that you can learn something new everyday is an attitude I have often encountered with many Japanese tea growers and blenders. Tak Aoki and his father who produce just 2000kg a year of his special Aoki Green tea are such people. I often think the best tea producers are part artist, part scientist and in this case they literally are. Aoki Senior creates exciting sculptures which fill his home and can also be found around the perimeter of his tea field and together, father and son use their scientific knowledge to make their own organic fertiliser. One of the reasons working in the tea world is so rewarding is that everyday I also learn something new about tea from a customer, from a book, or from a tea producer on my travels. I cannot imagine working in a field where this was not the case.

 

TAIWAN

WENSHAN, PIN LIN, MIAOLI, NANTOU, TUNG TING, ALISHAN, AND SAN LIN SHI

There is a special place in my heart for Taiwan. It was where I discovered a new world of tea during a weekend visit to Taipei to see the Chinese imperial art collection at the National Palace Museum. In the 15 years since then, I have regularly revisited IIha Formosa, the Beautiful Island as the Portuguese sailors named it in search of its tea. It was even where I took my wife on a honeymoon. Luckily the island's best hotel is surrounded by some of the island's best tea mountains!

While on our tea honeymoon, we visited Mr Chun a small family tea producer who grows tea using natural farming methods in the Aowanda area. After spending time at his farm where the photo of the happy hopper above was taken, we went with Mr Chun's family to their local Buddhist temple. There we had a fabulous feast of vegetables all grown like Mr Chun's tea completely naturally and then prepared perfectly by the monks. I think you can taste love in food and in tea. It is an ingredient often lacking from mass produced foods and the food at many restaurants but love was in abundance in the temple's food that day.

 

KOREA

BOSONG

One time staying in Seoul over the long weekend, I had visited as many tea stores and tea rooms as I could. Later when I had a chance to try all the teas I had bought, one tea captivated me. Its sweet biscuity taste and aroma was unlike any green tea I had drunk before. Returning to Korea in the late 1990s, I went in search of the tea store that had sold me the special tea and had the good fortune to met Mr Ha the owner of the store and the estate the tea came from. With his help and directions, I set off to visit the estate in the far south west of the country near the coast.

Here, in Bosong on a small mountain, was a little bit of paradise. Mr Ha had taken over the estate and started producing tea by traditional natural methods without modern agrochemicals. Seeing the wild flowers between the tea bushes, and the friendly enthusiasm of all the workers made my admiration for Mr Ha grow. Then they made me one of their spring teas called Sparrow's Tongue and I was bowled over by its smooth sweet intensity, it seemed to be the distillation of spring. "Naturally produced teas could be better than good, they could be truly exceptional!" I realised for the first time.

 

CHINA

LONG JING, ANXI, WUYISHAN, YUNNAN AND THE PHOENIX MOUNTAINS

"All tea is good. The only bad tea in the world is badly made in the factory or the kitchen" purred Professor Tea, Michael Ng between sips of tea. From his family's 19th century store Wing Kee Tea Merchants, Michael was the man who made vintage pu-erh tea popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan during the 1980s and 1990s.  Professor Tea, a title bestowed on him by grateful customers, was one of my first tea mentors and the person who introduced me and many others like the writer Bruce Chatwin to the joys of Chinese tea when travelling in China was more complicated than it is today.

I still believe in Professor Tea's words, all tea is intrinsically good, but over the years I have found that there are very few great teas. To make a great tea, there needs to be  perfect natural conditions and a master tea maker. Last year in the Wuyi mountains, the most likely birthplace of both black and oolong tea, I was fortunate to meet such a master tea maker.

Master Xu is an extremely modest man for the maker and guardian of the world's most expensive and sought after tea, the original Da Hong Pao. This legendary tea made from 350 year old tea bushes is called the King of Teas in China and was the tea that Mao gave Nixon when he visited China. The tea Master Xu made in 2006 fetched over $30,000 for 20 grams. As we drank the teas he had hand made earlier that year, he watched my face as it registered my amazement at the complexity and beauty of his teas. He didn't need a translation, I think he knew exactly how I felt.