Tea
Tasting
Enrich your experience with our culture activities
enrich Your experience
A Return to Tea’s True Nature: Charcoal, Time, and Quiet Appreciation
Tea Tasting
NEW: ZIYO presents a non-commercial tea tasting session—an experience rooted in purity, craft, and cultural depth.
This is not a setting for sales or performance. Once commercial intent is removed, what remains is tea in its truest form—unspoken, unhurried, and deeply expressive. This is not a product to be stretched or performed, but a cultural moment to be honoured.
Each session is an invitation to explore tea at its peak—not through repetition, but through depth. We focus on quality over yield, using refined brewing methods and intentional teaware to bring out the finest expression of each leaf.
Our foundation lies in traditional Taiwanese tea culture, but the session draws widely. We will explore teas from six categories—white, green, yellow, oolong, red, and black—ranging from seasonal harvests to aged teas that embody time, care, and quiet transformation.
At the heart of this session is the Wei Cha 煨茶法—a slow and rare brewing method that uses natural charcoal heat to reveal the most refined expressions of tea.
Charcoal is not just a tool—it is the soul of this approach. Its steady, penetrating warmth brings out subtleties that modern heating methods often miss. But charcoal demands space, time, and sensitivity—things not suited to fast-paced, commercial environments.
This is why Wei Cha is rarely practiced today. It’s nearly invisible in the modern tea world. And yet, it is precisely this slowness, this devotion, that allows tea to return to itself.
It is our passion to preserve this vanishing tradition and introduce it to those ready to listen—with time, attention, and an open cup.
What to Expect in This Session
- Tea Selection: We will explore teas from six categories, from seasonal teas to aged tea, each sourced from independent growers and chosen for character, provenance, and rarity.
- Brewing Technique: A focused practice of the Wei Cha 煨茶法 method, using natural charcoal heat to gently release the tea’s finest qualities.
- Sensory Appreciation: An invitation to notice. Not how many times a tea can brew, but how fully it expresses its nature in a single, perfect moment.
- Dialogue & Reflection: A quiet space for stories, impressions, and shared learning—without hierarchy, pressure, or product.
Your host, Yi Lin, is a London-based tea practitioner born into a family tea house in Nantou, Taiwan. Trained under masters and rooted in traditional tea arts, he shares not just brews, but presence and intention
“When commerce steps aside, tea begins to speak.”
“This is not about quantity, but about recognising the moment when tea reveals its essence.”
*Group Sessions Now Available
For those who wish to share the tea experience with others, we now offer a group option. This 2 hour session is ideal for friends, families, or small teams seeking a calm, meaningful gathering. Priced at £50 per person (maximum 4 guests), the group session preserves the same spirit of stillness, depth, and personal attention—simply shared together.