A tea renaissance is brewing, and Tea Drunk is leading the way in the eyes of consumers
NEW YORK, NY (August 9, 2021) - Loose leaf tea is forecasted to continue its upward trend in popularity in the upcoming years. Shunan Teng is aware of these trends but has an even more profound and visionary mission for Tea Drunk. Tea Drunk has become a world-renowned producer and distributor of the rarest and most exquisite loose leaf teas sourced directly from China's top terroir.
Founded by Teng, Tea Drunk is a Certified Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise in New York City. Teng grew up in a family of foodies and tea drinkers in China. At the age of 15, she came to the United States for school and later began a career in corporate finance in New York City.
Teng was shocked that she could not find authentic Chinese tea in a city as global as New York City (where you were supposed to have everything). On a visit home to China, she noticed the renaissance of tea occurring and it got her thinking of the possibilities in New York. At the age of 30, when many hit an existential crossroads, Teng left corporate America to pursue something more meaningful and close to her heart, tea. While leaving a safe and promising career seemed quite daunting, the signs were everywhere for her that tea was the path she was destined to be on.
She decided to devote herself to tea in 2012 and quickly realized how the industry was compromising quality for the sake of quantity with rising consumerism. She wanted to take things back to their roots, focusing on only historic teas and terroir. She visited tea vendors, educators, and scholars and trekked to some of China's most remote tea regions. While traveling through these ancient tea mountains, Teng worked alongside the heritage farmers, learning the nuanced factors that make an authentic tea, which strengthened her desire to preserve the tradition.
Tea Drunk was established in 2013, and the website tea-drunk.com and the flagship tea house in East Village, New York were launched in the same year. Over the years, Shunan's commitment to tea has only grown stronger. "It's like leaping from liking someone to loving someone. It's not all joys and butterflies. It's also when you are going through rough patches together, and things get painful, but you still want to stay. I have a strong sense of duty to tea like I want to do things for tea. I think I finally reached that feeling Steve Jobs talks about in his Stanford Speech, the belief that this is my destiny."
Tea has exposed Teng to a China that is so attached to our ancestors and the land they have left their spirit on. With all that experience and expertise, Teng's team at Tea Drunk focuses on creating a bridge between the ancient and modern worlds. They are doing this with an ambitious approach of creating the most robust collection of tea education on their Tea Drunk Academy, sharing tea and knowledge in community with their Educational Tea Club, and making top terroir tea more accessible to the market through conventional distribution. Through these goals, Teng hopes to assist in progressing the industry forward with better tea and more transparency and accountability.
More Content:
Watch Shunan on this short video exploring tea in tea country and Tea Drunk’s contribution to conservation. Listen to Shunan on the NüVoices Podcast, an international editorial collective celebrating and supporting the diverse creative work of women, non-binary people, and minorities working on the subject of China (broadly defined).
Visit our website (www.tea-drunk.com), our SFA showroom, and follow us on Instagram (@teadrunk).