Knowledge Base
Coffee & Tea Guides
Brew better and explore more — buying guides, how-tos, and explainers for every coffee and tea ritual.
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Panama Coffee: Boquete, Volcán and the Geisha Legend
Inside Panama coffee: the volcanic Chiriquí highlands of Boquete and Volcán, and the Ethiopian-descended Geisha variety that rewrote specialty coffee.
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Toraja Coffee: Sulawesi's Highland Wet-Hulled Origin
Toraja coffee is Sulawesi's remote highland arabica — wet-hulled like Sumatra but cleaner in the cup, with dark chocolate, ripe fruit, and warm baking spice.
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Mandheling Coffee: Sumatra's Earthy, Full-Bodied Classic
Mandheling coffee is North Sumatra's wet-hulled Arabica, prized for its heavy body, low acidity, and deep earthy, cedar, and dark-chocolate character.
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Huila Coffee: Colombia's Leading Single-Origin Region
Huila coffee is southern Colombia's washed Arabica star — sweet, fruit-forward, high-grown, and a perennial Cup of Excellence favorite.
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Tarrazu Coffee: Costa Rica's High-Altitude Benchmark
Tarrazu coffee, decoded: the high Los Santos terroir, strictly hard beans, honey processing, and the bright, clean cup that put Costa Rica on the map.
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Guatemala Antigua Coffee: The Volcanic Valley Classic
A guide to Guatemala Antigua coffee — the volcanic-soil terroir, three-volcano microclimate, washed processing, and its rich chocolate-and-spice profile.
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Harrar Coffee: Ethiopia's Wild, Natural-Dried Highland Bean
Harrar coffee is the sun-dried, natural-processed bean from Ethiopia's eastern highlands, famous for wild blueberry, winey fruit, spice, and heavy body.
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Yirgacheffe Coffee: Ethiopia's Floral, Washed Highland Origin
A guide to Yirgacheffe coffee — the floral, washed highland origin from Ethiopia's Gedeo Zone, prized for jasmine, bergamot citrus and a clean, tea-like cup.
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Papua New Guinea Tea: Highland Tea of the Wahgi Valley
Papua New Guinea grows bright, brisk CTC black tea in the highland Wahgi Valley — a small equatorial-highland industry, plucked year-round and often grown pesticide-free.
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Ugandan Tea: East Africa's High-Grown Blend Workhorse
Ugandan tea is East Africa's high-grown blend workhorse: bright, brisk, coloury CTC black tea from the western highlands and the Lake Victoria basin. Here is where it grows, why the land matters, and the comeback story that defines it - an industry nearly lost in the 1970s and rebuilt from the late 1980s.
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Mozambique Tea: The Gurué Highlands Origin
Mozambique tea is black tea from the high, rainy Gurué highlands of Zambézia — a Portuguese-colonial industry that once outshipped every African rival, collapsed during the civil war, and is now being slowly replanted for the world's blend market.
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Australian Tea: Tropical Black Tea from Far North Queensland
Australia grows real Camellia sinensis tea, mostly bright, brisk black tea from Far North Queensland's Atherton Tablelands. Meet Nerada, a machine-harvested tropical crop, and how it differs from tea tree and lemon myrtle.
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Ethiopian Wush Wush: A Specialty Tea from the Kaffa Highlands
Wush Wush is a smooth, sweet, fruity specialty tea grown high in the Kaffa highlands of southwestern Ethiopia — the birthplace of coffee. Here is what it is, where it grows and how it tastes.
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Cui Yu: Taiwan's Jade Oolong (TTES No. 13)
Cui Yu, or jade oolong (TTES No. 13), is a purpose-bred Taiwanese cultivar released in 1981 alongside milk-oolong Jin Xuan — floral, ball-rolled and magnolia-scented. Here's its cultivar story, terroir and flavor.
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Aracha: Japan's Unrefined Crude Tea, Explained
Aracha is Japan's crude, unrefined green tea — the semi-finished stage a farm produces before a merchant fires, sorts and blends it into sencha. Here is what aracha is, how shiage finishing works, and why kukicha, mecha and konacha all come from it.
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Guangdong Da Ye Qing: The Big-Leaf Yellow Tea
A classic yellow tea from Guangdong whose "green" name misleads: Da Ye Qing is made from large-leaf tea plants and finished with the men huang yellowing step, giving a deep golden, toasted-rice cup far heartier than the delicate bud-style yellow teas.
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Pingyang Huangtang: Zhejiang's Yellow Soup Tea
Pingyang Huangtang is a rare Chinese yellow tea from Pingyang county in Zhejiang, made green-style then softened by the slow men huang yellowing step. Here is its origin, its bright yellow "soup," the near-loss and revival, its taste, and how it compares to Junshan Yinzhen and Huoshan Huangya.
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Tian Jian: Anhua's Loose-Leaf Dark Tea & the Three Tips
Tian Jian, the "Heaven Tip," is the tender, unpressed top grade of Anhua's loose-leaf dark tea — the cleanest, sweetest of Hunan's three tips.
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Hei Zhuan: Hunan's Black Brick Dark Tea
Hei zhuan (black brick) is the everyday border-trade brick of Hunan's Anhua dark-tea family — coarse leaf, pile-fermented and pressed hard into a firm slab that brews a smooth, woody, mellow cup and ages well.
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Xing Ren Xiang: Almond-Aroma Phoenix Dancong Oolong
Xing Ren Xiang is the almond-aroma outlier of Phoenix Dancong oolong — a warm, marzipan-scented single-bush tea from Chaozhou, Guangdong. Here is where it grows, why the roast matters, and how its nutty character sets it apart from the floral dancongs.
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Zhi Lan Xiang: Phoenix Orchid-Aroma Dancong Oolong
Zhi Lan Xiang, the "Orchid Fragrance" of Phoenix Dancong, is the elegant orchid benchmark of Chaozhou's aroma-type spectrum — restrained florals over a smooth, honeyed body, with a long sweet hui gan.
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Ya Shi Xiang: Phoenix Duck-Shit Aroma Dancong Oolong
Ya Shi Xiang, the "duck shit aroma" Phoenix Dancong from Chaozhou, hides an intensely floral, gardenia-and-orchid oolong behind a deliberately ugly name. Here is the story behind the name, the terroir, the flavour and how to brew it.
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Mi Lan Xiang: Phoenix Honey-Orchid Dancong Oolong
Mi Lan Xiang ("Honey Orchid Fragrance") is the most popular aroma-type of Phoenix Dancong oolong, a twisted, roasted tea from the Phoenix Mountains of Chaozhou, Guangdong. Here's where it grows, why the single-bush tradition made it the honey-orchid benchmark, what it tastes like, and how to brew it.
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Ban Tian Yao: Wuyi's Half-Sky Cliff Oolong
Ban Tian Yao is a roasted Wuyi rock oolong whose mother bushes cling to a high cliff "halfway up the sky." Here's the famous-bush yancha's name legend, terroir, honeyed-herbal flavor, and how to brew it.