Chinese matcha’s rapid rise and the Hong Kong couple stirring up the UK tea scene

Despite their long histories, many of Britain’s most-established tea brands continue to frame tea through a colonial narrative, Chow says. He recalls visiting the Twinings flagship store in London’s West End, where he felt the only obvious reference to China was a pair of sculptures of Chinese sailors employed by the British Empire that sat above the entrance, while Chinese tea itself received little attention.

“You’ll go in and see this very colonial display where they feature [India’s] Assam and Darjeeling, which of course is where their [Twinings] plantations were,” he says. “Then there will be a very small footnote when you reach the end of the shop saying, ‘Oh, there’s this little thing called Puer tea and we have some of that in the corner over there.’”

By sourcing their teas directly from Yunnan’s oldest tea-growing regions, Chow and Ding set out to show a new generation of British tea drinkers the history behind their usual “cuppa”.