Chinese matcha’s rapid rise and the Hong Kong couple stirring up the UK tea scene

A trip to Puer in China’s Yunnan province changed the way Hongkongers Raphael Chow and his wife, Joyce Ding, thought about tea. Home of its namesake fermented brew, the city is widely regarded as the ancient birthplace of Camellia sinensis – the plant from which most of the world’s tea is made.

The London-based couple not only fell in love with the region’s teas, but also with its communal tea-drinking culture. Upon returning to the UK capital, they founded their own fine loose leaf tea company, Brut Tea, in 2024.

Despite their long histories, many of Britain’s most-established tea brands continue to frame tea through a colonial narrative, Chow says. He recalls visiting the Twinings flagship store in London’s West End, where he felt the only obvious reference to China was a pair of sculptures of Chinese sailors employed by the British Empire that sat above the entrance, while Chinese tea itself received little attention.

“You’ll go in and see this very colonial display where they feature [India’s] Assam and Darjeeling, which of course is where their [Twinings] plantations were,” he says. “Then there will be a very small footnote when you reach the end of the shop saying, ‘Oh, there’s this little thing called Puer tea and we have some of that in the corner over there.’”