I taste, choose, and write about every tea before it earns its place in the collection, which means everything here has passed the only test that really matters: I have to like it myself. But I didn’t set out to sell tea at all.
How I got here
My background is in engineering. In 2013 I left F1 to do an MBA at the University of Oxford, and somewhere along the way I fell for the messy, addictive business of building things from scratch. I spent the next few years doing exactly that with other people: first as part of a founding team chasing an idea that ran out of road before we could launch, then as the first hire at a young business finding its feet. I loved the work. I just hadn’t found the thing I actually cared about.
Then, in late 2017, with a bit of time on my hands, I signed up for a two-day introduction to tea at the UK Tea Academy, mostly because I’d always loved tea and can never resist learning something new. It was a revelation. I thought I knew tea; I definitely didn’t know as much as I thought, and what I didn’t know was far more interesting than I’d imagined. I qualified as a Tea Sommelier and started Team Tea in 2018.
What I wanted to build was a bridge: from the teabag most of us grew up with to the speciality tea world, which can feel a little closed-off if you don’t already speak the language. I think good tea should be for everyone, so I do the tasting and the explaining, and write it all down in plain English. No jargon, no gatekeeping.
Where the teas come from
The teas are grown all over the world, and I bring them in through specialist importers I’ve come to know well. It’s always a conversation: sometimes I go looking for a particular tea, garden, or region; sometimes they come to me, excited about a new garden they’ve started working with. Around 40% of the range is organic-certified, and every importer I work with is a member of the Ethical Tea Partnership, which works to improve life and conditions for the people who grow and pick our tea. You can find out more about what that means here.
Taste is personal
Between them, my teas have won 26 Great Taste Awards, so I’m fairly confident they’re good. But “good” and “right for you” aren’t the same thing. My favourite might not be yours, and that’s completely fine; if you don’t enjoy a tea, that doesn’t make it a bad tea, just not your tea.
The only way to find your teas is to try a few. The more you taste, the clearer your sense of what you love becomes, and once you understand what’s in the cup, you start to spot the patterns and predict what you’ll enjoy next. That’s really what Team Tea is for: not to tell you what’s best, but to help you find what’s best for you.
Treading lightly
I try to run Team Tea gently: tea sourced ethically, leftover leaf on the compost, and behind the scenes, solar, ground-source heat, and a fair bit more I won’t bore you with here. Here’s the honest version, including the bits still on my to-do list.
Good company
Running things single-handed can get a little lonely, so I lean on the people who understand it. I’m a proud member of Buy Women Built, the European Speciality Tea Association, and Independent Oxford, and the support of those communities has kept me going.
Come and say hello
You’ll find some of my teas at the Ashmolean Museum, and you’ll usually find me at Oxfordshire markets most weekends, with my dog Elvis supervising from under the table, ready to talk you through the teas and point you toward something you’ll love. If you can’t make it in person, this site is the next best thing.
Either way, my hope is a simple one: that you find the tea you didn’t know you were looking for, and that it finally tastes as it should.
Valerie
Tea Sommelier, Team Tea