The House Collection
A house of rare teas.
Rare tea is not a grade or a certification. It means a lot small enough that when it is finished there is no more of it. Everything here was bought that way, one lot at a time, by a maker who came into the trade in 1996. What follows a tea may be a new origin, or the next season from a garden we already trust.
Why these are rare
Rare is a quantity, not a grade.
There is no certification for rare tea. It means a lot small enough that when it is finished there is no more of it. Here is what makes each of these scarce.
- Gongting Palace Pu-erh
- Palace grade is the narrowest cut the category offers. Out of a tonne of mao cha, only thirty to sixty kilos survive the sorting.
- Sencha
- Single-cultivar Yamakai from one Shizuoka estate. We acquired the entire remaining lot.
- Darjeeling
- First flush only. The window is four to six weeks each spring.
- Shan Lin Xi High Mountain Oolong
- High mountain, grown in Nantou County, Taiwan.
- Anxi Roasted Oolong
- Anxi, in Fujian. A blend of a forty per cent roast and a sixty per cent roast.
- Kukicha
- The stems separated during the refining of an asamushi sencha. Not a by-product, a different part of the plant.
- Earl Grey
- The one blend in the house. Cold-pressed Calabrian bergamot on a base blended for malt and body.
Origins, considered.
The First Run
Every run is finite.
Each release is a single lot, and when that lot is gone it is not remade. Leave your email and you will hear before the first run opens. No payment is taken and there is nothing to cancel.
First run ships winter 2026