The teas
Tea chosen for the surf day, not the tasting table
Six Chinese teas, matched to the three moments of a session — the dawn check, the long wait, the cold-handed drive home. No blends, no invented flavours. Every one is a real leaf you can buy today.
Before you paddle out
Dawn patrol — clean, focused energy
Green tea carries caffeine alongside L-theanine, the amino acid that takes the edge off it. The result is a steady, alert calm rather than the spike-and-crash of an energy drink — useful when you are reading a grey line-up in cold half-light and want to be sharp, not jittery.
Moderate caffeine
Xihu longjing
Xīhú lóngjǐng · 西湖龙井
The classic pan-fired green from West Lake — chestnut-sweet, clean, no bitterness. A gentle, focused lift for a pre-dawn check of the swell.
Buy on shop.teamotea.com →Moderate caffeine
Liu an guapian
Liù'ān guāpiàn · 六安瓜片
A leaf-only green with no buds and no stem, so it forgives a rushed steep — smooth and mellow even when you brew it half-awake with one eye on the tide.
Buy on shop.teamotea.com →The long wait between sets
A thermos that forgives
White tea is barely oxidised and hard to over-steep — exactly what you want in a flask left sitting through a two-hour session. It gets rounder and sweeter as it sits, never stewed and tannic, and it cold-brews cleanly if the day turns warm.
Low–moderate caffeine
Gongmei pearls
Gòngméi lóngzhū · 贡眉龙珠
Hand-rolled into compact pearls that unfurl slowly — one pearl holds a thermos for the whole session, growing sweeter rather than bitter the longer it steeps.
Buy on shop.teamotea.com →Low–moderate caffeine
Yunnan baijian
Yúnnán báijiān · 云南白尖
A mellow Yunnan white with soft honey notes. Light to carry, easy to cold-brew straight in the bottle, gentle enough to drink all morning.
Buy on shop.teamotea.com →Back on the sand
Recovery — warm, gentle, grounding
After cold water and an empty stomach, you want something warming and easy — not more caffeine on jangled nerves. Aged shou pu-erh and a wild red tea are dark, sweet and settling, the kind of cup that turns the drive home into part of the ritual.
Moderate caffeine
Aged cha tou
Měnghǎi lǎo chátóu · 勐海老茶头
Naturally clumped nuggets of ripe pu-erh from Menghai — thick, smooth and earthy-sweet, gentle on an empty post-surf stomach and endlessly re-steepable.
Buy on shop.teamotea.com →Higher caffeine
Wild dianhong
Yúnnán yěshēng gǔshù hóngchá · 云南野生古树红茶
A malty, cocoa-rich red from old wild Yunnan trees. Warming and full — a proper reward when your hands are still cold and the session was good.
Buy on shop.teamotea.com →Coming — the surf line
Our own travel tins, packed for a board bag
The selection above is honest about one thing: today you buy these teas in the shop's standard tins. What we are building next is a tea.surf line — the same leaf, re-packed into flat, salt-proof travel tins sized for a board-bag side pocket, one for each moment of the day. This is a concept render, not a product on sale. When the tins are real, they will live here — not before.
