About Us
Tea is for everyone.
I’m Sasha and I run Black Cloud Tea.
I’ve been obsessed with Chinese tea for almost 15 years. An incredible discovery of taste that has led me to make life long friends and experience a rich and wonderful culture. Chinese tea is the best tea that I’ve personally experienced and my passion is to share this enjoyment with everyone. No prior knowledge or experience is needed to drink our tea, just let your taste buds guide you. Be comforted that the leaves have been hand picked and lovingly grown in small tea gardens, run by families and free from the pressures of big business.
I unwittingly began my tea journey when two separate events combined, firstly I quit alcohol in 2006 and then soon after, on a whim, I traveled to China for the first time. Both decisions changed my life for ever and for the better. In China I had my first tea house experience and felt like I had found a home. I love talking to people, so letting go of English Pub culture was a real loss for me, but learning about Chinese tea houses was a genuine blessing. A space to drink and chat, a simple but necessary pleasure. Wasting away the hours talking to strangers and drinking a healthy and tasty liquid, what more could you want.
I couch surfed for most of that first trip to China, and made some friends that are now basically family. We have seen our families grow together and China has become forever on my horizon. I never had any plans to discover China or tea, but they both found their way into my life. I’m very lucky.
Over the years I became more and more obsessed with the quality of Chinese tea, the variety blew me away, and the endless discovery of new flavours is sometimes overwhelming. I’m no business man and had no vision to make a tea business, but again fate has led me here. Skip the story on a few years, and some of my friends encouraged me to start my own tea venture. Purely to satisfy my own tea cravings, and to make my own bespoke curation of my favourite teas. I decided, in August 2019, to visit some tea specialist friends in China to start tasting and buying some teas. And so in 2020 Black Cloud Tea was launched.
There’s no master plan to maximise profit margins or to create merchandise, we simply want to share good tea. I want you to have the same enjoyment that I have with this special leaf.
We want all our tea suppliers, from the garden owner, to the picker, to be recognised for the extreme hard work and diligence in producing these exquisite and skilfully made teas.
I am incredibly grateful, and want to say a big thank you, to: Momo, Ruoyun, Dingjian, the Zhengyuan Tea Collective, Xiangdong, Phil & The Li Family, Fu Zhen Yuan, Emilie Butler, Tom Butler, Will Ritson, Samuel Stephenson, Peter Cline & Deborah. Without all of your generous help, advice & encouragement none of this would have happened. It's all your fault.
Thank you for reading.
Hopefully one day we will have our own tea house to meet you all in person.