It's not just that I'm a tea snob. It's that I know better now. And look — plenty of people love this stuff. But come on.

Anyway, I was happily brewing away day after day until I met the man who would eventually become my teacher. At the time he was just a friend. I told him proudly that I'd been having a great time with tea — the King's Tea, actually, expensive stuff from Ten Ren. He bowed his head. Shook it slowly from side to side. Then he got up, went to the back, and returned with a neatly packaged bag of tea. "Try this," he said.

So I did. I went home, brewed it up, and — oh my goodness. It was an osmanthus-scented oolong.

I was completely head over heels. I brewed it every chance I got — morning, noon, and night. I became so familiar with the scent that I felt almost compelled to seek it out, session after session. I couldn't believe what I'd been missing.

Then one afternoon, sitting on a bench in a park in Taiwan, the aroma of osmanthus drifted through the air. You have to understand — it's a distinct scent. Like jasmine, but stickier, earthier, a little fruitier, with that same clean quality. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I turned around, and the wall behind me was an osmanthus bush in full bloom.

I sat there for a long moment, completely absorbed. And then, just like that, I was transported back to the tea table. I turned to my friend and said, "Hey — tea sounds really good right now. Come over, I'll brew some." And that's exactly what we did.

That's the thing about sensory memory. Something as tactile as an osmanthus-scented oolong can reach back through time and pull you somewhere specific — a feeling, a place, a moment.

Recently I imported three batches of osmanthus-scented oolong for the shop. There's a high mountain oolong — the sweetest of the three. A milk oolong, which is just sublime. And an Iron Goddess of Mercy. What inspired me to source these? Honestly, it was prep for the International Tea Festival in San Francisco. Last time I was there, I noticed the palate of the crowd was a bit different than what I encounter here in the Pacific Northwest, and I wanted to bring something that would land well. These were some of the best I could find.

Interestingly, while I was brewing this tea for a friend at the teahouse, they mentioned there's a large osmanthus plant up in Hendricks Park. So we made a trip — camera in hand — to photograph it and grab some footage for the YouTube channel. The flowers won't be in bloom until September or October, so I'll update you when the time comes. For now, check out the images below, and let's find some time to brew a pot of osmanthus oolong together soon.

Here's the honest answer.

I was living in Taiwan. Tea sales were growing — more customers, more wholesale accounts, more tea moving out the door. At that point I was doing wholesale only, no retail, no teahouse. Just me and the tea and the people who wanted it.

My parents had been watching from a distance, helping out a little here and there, seeing the growth firsthand. My mom especially wanted me to move back to the US. She brought it up often, and one day during a phone call she really pressed me on it.

So I just asked her straight: "If I move back, what am I going to do for a living?"

I remembered what it felt like to be a young adult in the US — the financial pressure of just trying to keep the lights on, nothing extravagant, just surviving. That feeling was still very real to me.

Her answer? Sell tea.

Just like that. No hesitation.

That meant a lot. It was encouraging to know she had that kind of faith in me. But I still had doubts. A lot of them.

Shortly after, I was sitting with my teacher in his shop in Taiwan — one of those slow, quiet afternoons where the tea does most of the talking. I told him I was seriously considering making the move, going all in on the tea business back in the States. And then I told him the truth: I had doubts. I was nervous. I didn't know if I could do it.

He looked at me and said:

"If you want to be an ox, you just need to put on the yoke."

That was it. That was all he said.

Ancient wisdom. Simple and direct. Maybe I had been making it too complicated. Maybe readiness isn't a destination you arrive at — maybe it's something you grow into by starting.

I wasn't ready when I started selling tea. And that turned out to be okay.

What I was ready to do was work. I was willing to put in the time, to show up, to keep going even when I didn't know exactly what I was doing — which, honestly, was a lot of the time. I didn't always do the right thing. I didn't always know what I should be doing. But I wasn't trying to cut corners. I just didn't have all the answers yet.

Over the course of 20-plus years, the answers came. Not all at once. Slowly, through the doing.

There's no sign from the heavens. There's no mentor or guru who's going to appear and tell you that your dream is the right one, that the timing is perfect, that you're finally ready to begin.

You have to take a leap of faith. You have to be willing to put in the time and effort. And you have to keep moving.

Zig Ziglar said it well: "If you wait for all the traffic lights to turn green before you leave your home, you'll never get started on your trip to the top."

Stop. Go. Stop. Go. That's the rhythm. That's how you get there.

The goal isn't to have everything figured out before you start. The goal is to put on the yoke — and start pulling.

I learned this on a late night in Taiwan, sitting across from my tea teacher in his shop long after everything else on the street had gone dark and quiet.

It was just the two of us. He brewed a pot of something that stopped me mid-sip. The flavor was extraordinary — layered and clean and alive in a way that most tea never is. I set down my cup and asked if I could buy it.

He said no.

Not rudely. Just simply. No.

I understood, at least intellectually. When you're in the tea business and you have a batch this good, you don't wholesale it away. You keep it. You brew it for people who matter, people whose reaction tells the room everything about your knowledge and your taste. A tea like this isn't inventory — it's reputation.

So I let it go. We kept drinking. And the conversation drifted somewhere unexpected.

He started talking about his marriage. The difficulties. The distance that had opened up between him and his wife, and how he didn't quite know what to do with it. I don't know exactly why he chose to share it that night — maybe it was the hour, maybe it was the tea, maybe it was just one of those moments when something needs to come out and the right person happens to be sitting there.

I listened. We talked. I shared what I thought, not as advice exactly, but as someone who cared about him and was trying to understand. We sat with it together for an hour or two, the way you can only do when the rest of the world has gone to sleep.

When the conversation finally came to its natural end, I asked again. Would he sell me the tea?

He turned his head for a moment. Then said yes.

Something had shifted. Not because I had maneuvered it or planned it — I hadn't. But because two people had been genuinely present with each other, and the relationship had moved to a different depth. The tea followed.

That's what I mean by relationship tea. The best teas in Taiwan aren't commodities. They exist inside relationships, and they move only when the relationship is ready to carry them. You can have all the money in the world and still be told no. And you can have a real conversation at midnight in a dark tea house and walk away with something priceless.

I've thought about that night many times since. Not just because of the tea, but because of what it taught me about how value actually works in this world — and how much of what we most want can't be bought directly, only arrived at sideways, through presence and honesty and the willingness to just sit with someone in the hard parts of their life.

The tea was exceptional. The conversation was better.

The first time someone told me we'd leave when it felt right, I didn't know what to say.

It was about 10 o'clock at night in Taipei. We'd been drinking tea since morning — first at an all-day tasting event, then at dinner, and now at one of the most extraordinary tea houses I'd ever been in. The owner was a scholar and collector, the kind of person who thinks about tea the way a musician thinks about sound. The room was full of people from the tea industry, and the conversation had been flowing as freely as the tea itself.

I was living in Tainan at the time. That's a five-hour drive south. And as the evening stretched on, I started doing the math in my head, the way you do. Ten o'clock means we get home at three in the morning, minimum. I leaned over to my friend — the one who'd brought me on this trip — and asked when we were thinking of heading back.

He looked at me with a kind of calm that I wasn't used to yet. "We're going to drink tea," he said, "until there's a certain feeling. And then we'll go."

I didn't know how to argue with that. I also didn't quite know what it meant. A feeling? What feeling? By what time? But there was no clock in his answer, no schedule, no negotiation to be had. He meant it completely.

So I let go of the math and went back to the tea.

What happened next was one of the best educational experiences I'd had in the tea world up to that point. The host walked us through his collection of tea ware — the way certain pieces were arranged, why certain pots belonged with certain teas, how the objects in a room create an atmosphere that changes what you taste. I was absorbing things I didn't even know I needed to learn.

And then, somewhere around midnight, the feeling arrived. I couldn't tell you exactly what it was — a fullness, a completeness, a sense that the evening had given everything it had to give. We said our goodbyes and got on the road.

We stopped in Taichung on the way, dropping off one of the tea masters who had been with us. He lived about halfway home. As we approached his neighborhood, he'd been telling us about these candied kumquats — building up the story with the kind of slow relish that tea people have for good things. He'd tasted some once in Japan that had cost something like $300 each. He'd been describing the texture, the sweetness, the way the flavor sat in your mouth long after.

When we got to his building, he said: come up, I have some I want to share with you.

So at two in the morning, we sat in his apartment, surrounded by teapots on every surface, while he brewed tea and served us these tiny, luminous kumquats. They were extraordinary.

Then he gestured at a shelf on the wall. He was letting go of the teapots there, he said. Did I like to brew tea? Why didn't I go pick one for myself?

I'd been saving up for a good teapot for a while. I'd been studying them, trying to understand the clay, the craftsmanship, the things that separate a fine pot from an ordinary one. And here was an entire shelf, in the apartment of someone who actually knew.

I went slowly. I looked at each one. I didn't know as much as I wished I did, but I knew enough to recognize quality. I chose a small pot with a distinctive stamp and lines in the clay that told you it had been made by hand. Clean, precise, completely itself.

I still have that teapot. I'm looking at it as I write this.

We got back to Tainan around five in the morning. That was one of my first real immersions into this world — the world of people for whom tea is not a drink but a way of organizing life around beauty and presence and the unhurried moment. When I saw my friend's wife not long after, she laughed and asked if those people had scared me off, keeping me out all night like that.

They hadn't. They'd done the opposite.

I came back with a teapot, a story, and a slowly forming understanding that some of the best things in life don't happen on a schedule. They happen when the feeling is right. And when you stop fighting that, when you stop doing the math and just trust the evening, you sometimes end up somewhere you never could have planned.

As you might imagine, my algorithm is absolutely packed with tea tips, hacks, and tiny bits of tea wisdom. Most of the time they’re entertaining, sometimes they’re questionable—but every now and then something pops up that’s intriguing enough to try.

This one?
Lights-out success.
So good I had to share it immediately.

A Simple Seasonal Brew

This recipe is as humble as it gets—just fruit, ginger, and heat—but it creates one of the most soothing cups I’ve had all season.

Here’s how to make it:

1. Chop up an apple into small chunks.

2. Add a few pieces of our new organic ginger chunks.

3. Boil everything for 5 minutes in enough water to fill your favorite mug.

4. Strain into your mug and sip while it’s warm.

That’s it.

What you get is a naturally sweet, gently spicy apple-ginger “tea” that feels like comfort itself.

Why It Works

This little brew is:

• Calming

• Delicious

• Great for digestion

• Warming without being heavy

And according to Chinese medicine, apples are cold, but once you cook them, they are warm. This and ginger together help support the spleen—an organ tied to digestion, vitality, and overall balance—meaning this simple cup offers subtle nourishment beyond just flavor.

Tea… and a Snack

Here’s the part I didn’t expect:
After you drink the tea, you can eat the soft, boiled apple.

It turns into this warm, gently spiced treat—almost like the simplest, healthiest dessert ever. A tea and a snack in one, made from ingredients you probably already have.

Seasonal, Simple, and Nourishing

Not every discovery has to be complicated. Sometimes the algorithm delivers something surprisingly thoughtful—a reminder that even small, everyday ingredients can become comforting, restorative, and special.

Give it a try the next chilly evening.
Your body (and your mood) will thank you.

During my vacation I picked up a book about a young man who goes through a profound process of self-discovery. He enters university without a clear sense of direction and, almost by accident, stumbles into the world of literature. Something sparks. He falls in love with stories, language, and the written word—an art form he had never truly encountered before. That love reshapes him. He transforms his life, his studies, even his identity, eventually becoming a professor of literature.

Reading his journey got me thinking about awakening—how we come to recognize the things that move us, the things that were always there waiting to be discovered.

I’ve also been reflecting on the powerful effect that art has on people, how it reaches into the quiet places inside us and draws something forward. And all of that, inevitably, leads me back to tea.

Tea has always been intertwined with art in my mind, especially in Taiwan, where tea is not only one of life’s great pleasures, a digestive aid, and a wonderful conversation companion—it is art. Making tea, using handmade teaware, drinking from porcelain or clay cups, arranging a simple tea table: all of it becomes an expression of beauty. Craftsmanship. Intention. Presence.

The thoughtful presentation of tea elevates something simple and ordinary into something profound.
A leaf, some water, and heat become an experience that opens the senses.

As I sat with these thoughts over the past few days, I realized something: tea represents awakening.

Not just because the caffeine wakes us up—though it certainly does—but because tea invites us to wake up to ourselves. To slow down enough to notice. To pay attention. To let nuance and subtlety remind us of what we’re capable of feeling.

Tea awakens us to the discovery of art.
Tea awakens us to the discovery of beauty in the everyday.
Tea awakens us, ultimately, to the discovery of the self.

I started J-TEA because I once wanted to like tea but couldn’t — until living in Taiwan showed me what real tea could be. That discovery reshaped everything.

Now I help others make that same discovery: that tea isn’t just a drink, it’s a bridge — between cultures, between people, and between who we are and who we’re becoming.

Tea is a pen pal for the soul, and J-TEA is here to deliver the letter.

Not only does it serve countless functions, but it also bears the heaviest burden of all: it’s the part that most often breaks. One of my tea teachers in Taiwan used to love giving mini lectures and demos about all the ways a gaiwan lid could be used. After years of brewing, spilling, and learning, I can confirm — that little porcelain disc is basically a multi-tool for tea survival.

1. The Obvious: Keeping the Heat In

First and foremost, the lid does what lids do — it keeps the heat inside. When you’re brewing tea, this helps maintain a higher temperature so the leaves can unfurl and release their full aroma and flavor.

2. The Strainer: A Perfect Pour

Here’s where things get interesting. With a slight tilt, the lid turns into a built-in strainer. By creating just the right gap between the lid and the bowl, you can pour out the tea liquor while holding the leaves back. This is particularly useful when we are going for multiple infusions.

Think of it like straining pasta with the pot lid — except in this case, you don’t end up with a sink full of spaghetti. The gaiwan lid was designed for this precise function.

3. The Aroma Evaluator

Once you’ve poured your tea, hold the lid to your nose. This moment — inhaling the rising fragrance from the lid — is one of the most intimate ways to connect with your tea. The leaf’s aroma and quality can be interpreted by the residual scent.

4. The Stirring Tool

Hold the lid perpendicular to the bowl and use it to gently agitate the leaves. This helps you check the progress of the brew — or simply interact with the tea in a tactile, meditative way. Sometimes you can tell a lot about how the tea is evolving just by watching how the leaves move.

5. The Silent Messenger

In traditional teahouses in parts of China, the position of your gaiwan lid could send a clear message to the attendant:

• Tilted to the side — “Please add hot water.”
• Upside down in the bowl — “I’m done.”

It was an unspoken communication system, efficient and elegant.

And there’s even a more obscure version: rotating the lid clockwise or counterclockwise a certain number of times was said to signal group affiliation — a kind of secret handshake or “tea gang sign” for the initiated.

6. The Cup in a Pinch

Lost your teacup? The lid’s shallow curve works surprisingly well as an emergency drinking vessel. It’s not the most refined method, but it gets the job done — especially when sharing tea outdoors or on the road.

The Lid That Does It All

From heat retention to straining, aroma evaluation, stirring, signaling, and even sipping — the gaiwan lid truly does it all.
It’s elegant, functional, and quietly indispensable. And yet, it’s also fragile — often the first part to break. Maybe that’s fitting. For something that carries so much purpose, it’s only natural that it also bears a little extra vulnerability.

So next time you lift that lid, remember: it’s not just a piece of porcelain. It’s a teacher, a tool, a communicator — and, in its own way, a survivor.

Maybe it was the line from the Chinese mystic Lu Tong:

“The first cup moistens my lips and throat,
The second shatters my loneliness,
The third causes the wrongs of life to fade gently from my memory,
The fourth purifies my soul,
The fifth lifts me to the realm of the unwinking gods.”

In that moment, I realized — I was a tea person.

I decided to make the switch from coffee to tea, but there was one problem: in 1995, the only tea available on campus was bad tea — low-quality tea bags that left my stomach aching after a few cups. I wanted to like tea. I already felt a deep, almost psychic connection to it, but I couldn’t make the shift.

Then, in 1996 and 1997, I went to Taiwan. That was where I first saw the true depth of tea culture. My roommates were deeply into tea, and even though I didn’t yet know how to participate, I could sense that tea was something special — something powerful.

It wasn’t until the year 2000, when I moved to Tainan, Taiwan, that everything changed. Tainan — the cultural heart of Taiwan — is a city that celebrates connection, humanity, and the shared joy of food and tea. It was there that I fell deeply into the world of tea.

I saw how tea wasn’t just a beverage; it was a way of life. It was everywhere — woven into daily routines, art shows, and traditional events. Tea connected people. It slowed time. It invited presence. It breathed life and meaning into the spaces between human relationships.

I realized this was something my friends and family back in the U.S. were missing — not just the flavor, but the feeling of real tea.

I had caught the bug, and I knew I had to share it.

That’s why I created J-TEA: to bring the purity, quality, and spirit of Taiwan’s finest teas to people here. To make sure that anyone who wants to experience tea the way it was meant to be — with intention, depth, and joy — can do so.

It all started with a simple wish:
I wanted to like tea.
And along the way, tea taught me the art of appreciation.

The U.S. tariff situation is still under review. We’ve done our best to stabilize the impact through careful pre-buying. Whatever happens, our mission remains the same: to keep you supplied with the best teas possible, without compromise.

What Exactly Is Oolong?

I find myself wanting to describe the category of oolong the way it is described in Taiwan, as a partially oxidized tea. Green tea is un-oxidized, black tea is fully oxidized, and oolong tea is partially oxidized. But this explanation falls short. Oolong is the wide-ranging category of tea that lives between green tea and black tea. Because of that, it’s incredibly diverse in flavor and aroma.

Oolong is the reason J-TEA exists. While living in Taiwan, I fell in love with this tea, and it sparked the beginnings of this business.

The origins of oolong trace back to Fujian and the Wuyi mountains of southern China. Americans have been drinking Wuyi tea since the 1700s, though it wasn’t yet called “oolong.” The earliest use of the term “oolong” in English appears in the mid-to-late 1800s.

By 1868, “Formosa Oolong” (from Taiwan) was being imported to the U.S. in significant quantities. Today, oolong makes up roughly 90% of Taiwan’s tea production. In 2015, Taiwan consumed 70% of its own tea and exported just 30%. As Clarissa Wei writes in Made in Taiwan, oolong is truly “Taiwan’s darling.”

Why Choose Oolong Over Green or Black?

Like many preferences, it often comes down to exposure. For me, living in Taiwan meant being immersed in oolong culture. Once you explore it, the sheer variety makes it irresistible.

Oolong offers both the floral delicacy of green teas and the rich depth of black teas, often in the very same cup.

Oolong in the Spotlight

• Luciano Giubbilei (award-winning garden designer) was profiled “over a cup of oolong” in Vogue.
• Emma Myers (Wednesday, NYT 8/24/25):
  “I've always been obsessed with tea — I almost opened my own teahouse before I booked Wednesday. Oolong is my favorite — I like how light it is and florally. I like to steep mine and make it iced. Then I put a tiny little bit of honey in it.”

Oolong is making the big time, one cup at a time.

Premiumization of Tea in the U.S.

The retail tea market is shifting. Shoppers are buying fewer boxes, but spending more per unit. Tea is premiumizing — and for good reason.

High-quality tea comes from the finest leaves, carefully harvested and crafted. Yes, the costs of raw materials, labor, and packaging are high. But when you consider that a single session with top-quality leaves can cost less than a café latte — and deliver far more depth and benefit — it’s easy to see why tea drinkers are choosing better.

Mass-market tea is harvested by machines in large quantities, keeping costs and prices low. In contrast, premium teas — like the oolongs we specialize in — are carefully hand-crafted, and their export value is correspondingly high.

Your Next Step

Want to dive deeper into oolong?
? Watch our short YouTube video about oolong tea

From the Teahouse

It always brightens my day when I see you at a tasting, hear from you in an email, or when I get to know your favorite type of tea. Oolong tea may be the heart of J-TEA, but you — our tea community — are the soul.

Thank you for supporting us, for asking questions, and for sharing tea stories of your own. If you haven’t stopped by in a while, I’d love to see you. Stop by and have a taste of whatever is "the brew of the day" and hop on the wall of tea.

With gratitude,
Josh Chamberlain
J-TEA International