Communi-tea
For several years, I enjoyed tea alone; drinking more-so to have some with my Bible reading time or opting for it instead of coffee. Eventually a few folks that also knew what a dragon pearl was came around, but I hadn't known for much longer than them. Then came COVID, and with it my foray into the recesses of the Pu'er community. Suddenly I was enveloped by a world of intrigue and flavor, and had a tap into a culture I had always dreamed of being fully immersed in one day.
After finding my way onto some online forums, I quickly assimilated into a Discord server called CommuniTEA. I stayed a while, became friends with many folks, became a mod, and then that season passed and it sort of splintered a bit.
It did however provide a wonderful springboard into learning I thought sheng was great and shou was not. In any case, I was sure that I wanted more. This knowledge and experience began to compound while meeting some folks that are now lifelong friends. Andrew and I started the Liquid Proust Teas server (that later became The Tea Table as it is today) not many weeks after.
When I was still on CT though, it did not take long for me to get my first "sample bomb" in the mail from none other than our dear friend, Mr. Mopar 😄 (see his sick '73 challenger below)
This man is not only driving an immaculate piece of American muscle car memorabilia, but he's also a teahead with a knack for helping the community experience good tea at good prices. If you're ever in the market for some Pu'er that others may not carry, check him out.
Back in the day, Mopar found out I was new to tea and engaging a lot with the community and had a hunger to learn. While some squished me down with their pretentious remarks and others took a passive stance, Mopar decided to bless my mailbox with a care package of a small variety of teas, primarily Pu'er.
That was 5/18/2020 by record of Discord messages. I was in NYC with my good friend Levi having duckshit oolong at Floating Leaves Teahouse just a week prior. Right before the lockdowns happened, it was a ghost town and felt like a dystopian movie to be in the city, we had free rein!
I met Nissan (Knjitea) from T-Shop that same weekend. Maybe a year later, June 2021, I'd crash at Seo's place for a tea weekend with him and Nissan and get red pilled on proper yan yun from some aged 70's yancha, White Burgundy from Chablis, and thick firm tofu with crazy good kimchi and pork belly.
It was a great weekend.
Fun fact: The very first ripe tea I ever had was an original 1970's real deal CNNP brick with Nissan my first time in NYC under absolutely optimal parameters...perfect water, immaculate tea ware, and phenomenal brewer all at T-Shop.
I was ruined for shou from that point on...
When I got back from the trip, Mopar's box held in it:
- Some mid-2000s Changtai, an 06 Si Pu Yuan for sure (which I thought I didn't like but looking at past messages I guess I did 😂)
- Some YQH (yep, that's right! Mopar put me on it first!), the 2005 Cangliu.
- Some Yunnan Sourcing samples.
- And some other various things.
About 13 samples in all, neatly packaged in little colorful mylar sample bags.
I had tried a couple and was already getting excited when Mopar shot me a message saying he was doing bigger sample bundles for $2 a piece. He had a list of 46 teas he was offering if anyone wanted to try some.
$90 and free shipping later, I had a shoebox with one of everything.
A couple weeks later I was drinking the 2012 EoT Baotang and having my mind blown yet again. You know the one...
I'm getting the timelines mixed up I'm sure, I can't remember the order of everything. Somewhere before I bought my first Yixing pot from Doglegs and got to try the ZCCW, Vehk and I were hanging out on voice when I learned he was a potter with tea ware aspirations in the future. He had shown a few pictures of some of his very early work, some of his first batches, and after hearing I didn't have a pot and wanted to try one - mailed me one of his first for absolutely free.
Glazed stoneware with solid heat retention, that pot was used very heavily for a very long time; producing a smile each use, unless it had shou in my desperate attempts to match the experience of the 70s brick 😂
Meanwhile, it didn't take long for me to find out I loved YQH, one taste of that Cangliu and boy I was hooked. I was quickly after meeting Andrew in the pu'er channels and forming a friendship with him as well. I'd take advantage of his YQH stores to sample a whole bunch more.
Another fun fact: The first sheng I ever tried was the 2004 YQH Zhencang Chawang (ZCCW) 🤣 I bought the zini hanwa you see below from Doglegs and he gave me a nice sample, but he didn't realize how green I was 😄
I have no idea how these sort of things happen to me but they always do!
This time however, unlike with shou, I was very able to get back to that baseline in the course of time.
I can't honestly remember who or where I tried the 05 Yuanshi Senlin Huangshan Cha (YSSL) that would then become sort of my namesake tea for a bit there and coin the term "mushrooms and toothpaste". I must have been so lost in it's taste that I just tunneled and needed more 😂
At some point I had reached out to Andrew to start up a conversation about tasting some stuff. I don't fully recall when I got everything, but I gave him $200 and a big ol' box of YQH samples landed at my door. I was off to the races.
We could pour over at least a dozen more stories about being blessed by the tea community. This is a community that helps each other, and I love and value that greatly. Sample-bombing new folks is almost part of the hobby at this point. Of course not everyone becomes that active, and not everyone receives, but the percentage that does is quite high.
We have a very special thing here, and if you're reading this, you're likely part of it.
I can go to almost any major city and any country on earth now and have someone connected to our tea community reasonably nearby. It's amazing. Here's just a short and brief list of a few things top-of-mind I've been able to do being part of this community:
- Meet Andrew, become friends for life, and have him in my wedding.
- I mean come on...does it really get more impactful than this???
- Meet tea friends online - in person and share amazing experiences in tea, food, and conversation:
- In Columbus, NYC, Boston, Nashville, and more
- Make friends with vendors and collectors, and get access to things many in the world never will
- Try a whole bunch of awesome tea, dating back even to the 1930s!!!
- Article on this here (coming soon)
- And if you didn't catch on yet - make multiple meaningful friendships.
Fast forward to May 2025, and we can have a dozen plus people live tea table sessions with folks popping in and out with relatively low effort.
This is what this community is about.
We are eclectic, but we are raw. Some of us are opinionated, but we are engaged. We may be geeky, nerdy, and a bit odd at times, but if you aren't part of our world yet...
You don't have a clue what you're missing.
I'll leave you with a short message exchange between Mr. Mopar and I after I received the first sample box. I'd probably been in the original server for a couple months tops. This set the tone for me. For life.
P.S.
If you haven't yet, be sure to check out the other posts in the "Values" series:
Brandon Kendall
Brandon Kendall
Brandon Kendall
