From agricultural roots to tea procurement
Michael grew up in a farming family in Zhejiang province, where the rhythm of the seasons was measured in tea harvests. He didn’t set out to work in tea — his early studies were in agricultural logistics, but a single internship with a tea exporter landed him in Menghai, Yunnan, during the spring maocha season. The smell of withering leaves over a wood fire, the quiet intensity of cupping sessions in a family workshop, and the trust between farmer and buyer reorganised his ambitions entirely. He stayed.
For the next five years he immersed himself in the pu-erh supply chain: learning to evaluate fresh maocha, understanding the impact of leaf age and terroir, and slowly building a network of growers from Xishuangbanna to Lincang. He earned the trust of smallholders by being present — not just at harvest, but during off-season maintenance, sharing meals, and listening to their struggles with weather and market pressure. That field presence became the foundation of his work.
When Teamotea created its direct-procurement arm, Michael was a natural fit. He now leads quarterly sourcing trips across Yunnan and occasional excursions into Fujian for oolong and white tea lots. His process is meticulous: blind cupping hundreds of samples, visiting gardens unannounced to verify cultivation practices, and negotiating prices that keep small farms viable. He works closely with senior tea expert Fang Ting to finalise which lots make it to the shop, combining on-the-ground knowledge with deep sensory evaluation.
His field reports — published regularly on tea.travel — have become the backbone of the shop’s transparency effort, mapping lot numbers to exact villages and farmers. Michael often says that a tea’s story begins long before the cup, in the red soil and morning fog of a single hillside. His mission is to make that story legible to drinkers halfway across the world.
The old gardens of Nan Nuo Shan
No single mountain defines Michael’s work, but if there is a place he returns to again and again, it is Nan Nuo Shan in Xishuangbanna. Here, tea trees planted by the Hani people six hundred years ago rise from a forest floor thick with ferns and decaying camellia petals. The altitude — ranging from 1,200 to 1,800 metres — slows growth, concentrating amino acids in the bud and giving the finished pu-erh a creamy bitterness and a long, cooling aftertaste.
Michael knows the mountain’s micro-terroirs intimately: the granite-rich slopes above Banpo village, where leaves develop a pronounced mineral backbone; the shadier eastern faces that produce softer, more floral lots; and the isolated grove of wild arbor trees known locally as La Ba Zhai, reachable only by a three-hour hike. He often stays in a small Hani family compound during spring picking, waking before dawn to walk the rows with the farmer, tasting raw leaves for umami depth and observing the deft plucking of one bud and two leaves.
The fresh maocha is processed in a low wooden building lit by a single bare bulb: wok-fired by hand, rolled on bamboo trays, and sun-dried on woven mats. Michael insists on being present for every step — not as a supervisor, but to document conditions and cup each day’s production on the spot. Those cupping notes, scribbled in a waterproof notebook, travel with the lot all the way to its listing on shop.puerh.app.