In session with Mei Yang

There is no lobby, no key card, no view from a balcony — and yet the hour you spend in this house of tea asks for a deeper arrival. You set the kettle to a low, rolling boil and unpack a linen parcel that arrived by post the week before: two caddies, a small white porcelain gaiwan, and a handwritten card from Mei Yang. The kitchen table becomes a tea room in Jingdezhen light.

When you book an online session, Mei appears on your screen from her studio in Guangdong, the soft rustle of a paper window screen behind her. Her hands move through the gōng fū chá (工夫茶) choreography — warming the vessel, waking the leaves, decanting the first brief steep onto a wooden tray — and she narrates each gesture not as instruction but as recollection. She tells you about the morning mist on Wudong Mountain, about the Fujian farmer who still smokes his zhèng shān xiǎo zhǒng (正山小種) over pinewood, about the single bush her grandmother tended for sixty-three springs. The screen melts; you are there.

In-person sessions, held in carefully chosen partner rooms in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, offer a different kind of stillness. You step off a loud street into a room where the only light falls through bamboo blinds onto a low zitan table. A cha hai and a row of pinming cups wait in quiet order. Here Mei moves around you, pouring the first cup of Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香) — the honey-orchid dancong that is her signature — and invites you to cup the empty wén xiāng bēi (闻香杯) in both hands, inhaling the bouquet that clings to warm porcelain. There is nothing hurried. The session might extend to 120 minutes because a second varietal — a wild Jīn Jùn Méi (金骏眉) from Tongmu Guan — opens a conversation about altitude, about the narrow windows of spring plucking, about the way black tea can taste of stone fruit and embers at the same time.

This house, whether it occupies your dining room or a hidden atelier downtown, has its own tempo. It begins with a small cup of hot water to reset the palate. Then the first steep is a ten-second pour; the next a little longer, until the leaves have given everything. Mei holds the clear cha hai to the light and shows you the color — sometimes champagne, sometimes amber, sometimes the blush of a young peach. She places a dry leaf on your palm so you can feel the twist, the downy tip, the slight weight of a single bud gathered before Qingming. The body softens, the breath slows. By the time you drain the seventh cup, you have shared an hour of sensory attention that feels both deeply personal and completely ancient.

Many of Mei’s seasonal notes and sourcing journals live on puerh.app, where she writes about the shifting character of Phoenix Mountain harvests and the quiet revival of old-craft black teas. For guests who want to stretch a session into a full retreat, she also serves as visiting master at tea.villas in Bali, where the programme unfolds over five days of jungle-isolated steeping and leaf study. Whether you come online for a single tasting or travel to a retreat, the house of Mei Yang’s tea is a space held open by ritual — a lesson in presence poured six grams at a time.

The session pour

Every sommelier session is built around two curated Chinese teas, chosen during a pre-call to match your palate and curiosity. Mei Yang’s curriculum draws from her dual specialisation in dancong oolong and black tea (hóng chá), with an emphasis on single-origin lots from Phoenix Mountain and Wuyi. A typical online meeting might pair a spring-harvest Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香) — dancong with a vivid honey-orchid nose — against a traditional zhèng shān xiǎo zhǒng (正山小種), the smoked lapsang souchong that tastes of pine resin and longan wood. In person, the selection broadens: perhaps a 2018 aged shuǐ xiān (水仙) rock tea, or a rare golden-thread Jīn Jùn Méi (金骏眉) that she personally cupped in a Tongmu village earlier that year.

The gongfu preparation follows a deliberate rhythm. Mei uses a 100–120 ml gaiwan and water held just below boiling, adjusting temperature to the leaf — 90 °C for dancong, a full boil for robust black tea. She rinses the leaves once, a two-second wash that awakens their aroma without leaching the first steep’s vitality. Then she pours the initial infusion — eight to ten seconds for oolong, a little longer for black — and distributes it evenly into the fair-sharing pitcher before filling each cup. The first round is sipped in silence, a calibration of the senses. By the third steep, the conversation opens: you learn about the fèng huáng dān cóng (凤凰单丛) classification, why certain bushes produce yù lán xiāng (玉兰香) magnolia notes while others lean toward yā shǐ xiāng (鸭屎香) — the infamous “duck-shit” aroma — and how the long, twisted leaves of a dancong require a specific packing density in the gaiwan to unfurl fully.

Throughout the hour, Mei draws on her resident-master practice at teamotea.com, where she selects batch micro-lots for the global catalogue, and on her research published at puerh.app, where older posts chart the evolution of individual bushes across seasons. The tea programme isn’t a tasting menu; it’s a masterclass compressed into a single sitting, distilled to the quiet intimacy of a shared cup. Guests leave with a digital journal that records the teas, the brewing parameters, and Mei’s tasting wheel annotations — a guide for continuing the practice at home.

Amenities

• Two curated single-origin Chinese teas shipped ahead for online sessions

• Porcelain gaiwan, fairness pitcher, and tasting cups provided for in-person appointments (or shipped in a premium kit)

• One-on-one guidance from Mei Yang, senior tea expert (oolong & black tea)

• Private, camera-ready setup in quiet partner tea rooms in NYC, SF, LA — or remote from your own space

• Digital tasting journal with variety notes, provenance maps, and Mei’s aroma wheel

• Access to Mei’s seasonal tea notes and behind-the-harvest reports on puerh.app

• Flexible session length: 60, 90, or 120 minutes

• Option to add a rare vintage or a third tea for deep-dive exploration

What’s included

• Pre-session consultation to calibrate preferences, experience level, and any dietary notes

• Two Chinese teas dispatched in airtight, light-proof caddies (online) or prepared fresh in-room (in-person)

• Personal session time with Mei Yang — from a focused 60-minute steep to a 2-hour exploration

• Digital brewing guide, varietal introduction, and tasting wheel for post-session practice

• Optional recording of session highlights with timestamped tasting notes

• Follow-up sourcing recommendations and access to the teamotea.com small-batch collection chosen by Mei