About Us

How do we source our teas?

We go for the best tea of its type.

We're often asked what our favorite tea is. In short, our favorite teas are those that represent the best of what a specific type of tea - aka the combination of its cultivar, terroir, and processing style - has to offer. The way those elements, which must be individually excellent, come together to make something so beautiful is what we, as tea lovers, live to experience. Every tea that we choose is handpicked from dozens of teas from the same category that we taste through to find our favorites.

Our selection is vintage-focused, always.

Tea is an agricultural product, and each tea comes from a specific time and a specific place. Our focus on vintage serves as a reminder of this, and also reflects our commitment to transparency when it comes to the age of our teas. This also means that when a specific vintage is gone, it is gone for good.

We source directly from origin.

We try to source directly from tea farmers and tea producers as much as possible. This is the most fun for us, and it also feels good to be connected to the tea makers on the ground! That said, we are also aware that, as a new small business, we and other small players like us cannot single-handedly keep these small farmers and tea producers in business. And it is hard for them, in turn, to offer us competitive prices. It is much more stable and sustainable for them to be able to rely on slightly bigger players including wholesalers and distributors (also from origin), who in turn can support smaller players like us. As we continue to grow, and as travel to the tea mountains of China and Taiwan becomes possible again (fingers crossed!), we strive to become an entirely farm-to-cup teahouse!

When does a dream begin? It's hard to say. Officially, Yin founded Broken Cup Teahouse in early 2022, though she had already been dreaming about it and playing pretend teahouse for years. For her, tea is a thing of beauty. It is at once simple and humble, and yet profound. How is it that tea can cultivate such things as patience, curiosity, self-awareness, friendship, generosity, and appreciation for the true, good and beautiful? There is some undeniable magic in it. To be able to partake in and pass down this tradition that is thousands of years old is a true blessing and honor.