The Mission of Teance
By Winnie Yu
Thanks to the support of our community, Teance is now in its 7th year in business. We began as a teahouse, featuring a teabar that serves to educate and provide a context for our customers to experience our teas expertly prepared, giving some of the finest teas in the world due justice. We wanted to create a space to bridge the remote mountains of Asia and the farmers who craft the teas, to the refined tea culture that exists now in its few thousand years of history in Asia, ready to be experienced in a contemporary form in the West.
Yet most teas that exist in the market place are brought to you via large enterprises, grown in commercially controlled estates, made by hired laborers. But the best teas are available only from their indigenous farms in remote regions, harvested by hand, and crafted by generations of artisans and teamasters. These teas are much in demand by the locals. As the standard of living increases in countries like China, and appreciation for fine teas have historically existed, these premium teas become even more difficult to obtain outside of their specific locales. In countries like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea, fine teas are so much sought after that they are rarely exported.
Tea is an agricultural product subject to weather , soil, and other natural environmental concerns. Teas grown in low lying areas will suffer from global warming and increased pollution, and so we import only high grown teas. The farmers and growers we buy from pull from their ancient traditions to overcome some of these issues, but also, rely on the help of tea research institutes who help develop new varietals that suit the ever changing environments. For example, many ancient tea groves on Phoenix Mountain have died in this past 80 years, trees that have grown to 500 or more years old. Yet new areas on the planet are being planted with tea for big enterprises, such as Africa. Cheap labor, and teas bred for generic blending into teabags, puts this level of tea into the same category as other factory produced fast foods that Americans are used to consuming for convenience.
By buying directly from small farmers and producers who are owners of their farms in their originally grown mountains, we pay the farmers fair prices that they ask for, and not pay for the middle margins that many importers and large factories make make. For the quality of tea that we import, we are able to secure extremely reasonable prices. Farmers are also very happy to find appreciation for their teas. As a tea buyer, many of these farmers are friends of mine, and over the years, through mutually respectful exchanges, they hear that Americans are learning to appreciate their teas, and we learn about their continued efforts to elevate their craft to new levels. Sure, many farms do succumb to market demands. In recent years, many unscrupulous merchants have set up factories to produce Pu-Erh for example, riding the wave of demand that caused exaggerated prices and returns.
However, the mission of Teance is to find the best teas that are fairly valued, pay fair prices directly to the farmers, and offer them in the U.S. through education and storytelling. The stories of these thousand year traditions, multiple cultures and thousands of varietals, tea masters and producers who have spent entire lifetimes perfecting their skills, give us depth and value that commercial enterprises who merely market their products can not achieve. We bring you real people with real teas.
PROMOTIONS
Chefs, restauranteurs, cafe owners drink for free!
We welcome our food and beverage community to come for a taste test of our teas >
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