Searching for Tea in Berlin

holding my breath till I find good tea

Not sure how to break this to you, but I'll pull the proverbial band-aid away: I found a really nice tea shop/tearoom in Berlin. If you've been following my travels, you know that my prospects were not looking good. My last post was written as politely as I could manage, but I doubt I'd recommend anyone go there. Perhaps only if you were to buy tea and take it home with you.

Tee Tea Thé in the early evening

I should say that I did find Tee Tea Thé (Goltzstraße 2, 10781 Berlin 030/21752240) in Berlin-Schöneberg the first evening I arrived. They sell a variety of tea brands including Ronnefeldt and Pure Tea, even Celestial Seasonings, as well as a handful of others.

the shelves at Tee Tea Thé

When I stayed in a nice hotel in Stuttgart, I thought a bit about Ronnefeldt Tee when I wrote In defence of a brand of teabags. Up until then, I'd only had the tea-bagged version, but here was row after row of this loose-leaf tea on offer.





Most German tea companies that've been around for more than a century are located in harbour cities such as Hamburg or Bremen. The fact that Ronnefeldt was founded in 1823 in Frankfurt am Main (far away from the coast) is both curious and impressive to me, and this brand appears to be the tea that many good hotels worldwide choose to serve. I've asked it before: How did that come about?

I'd certainly like to get to know this tea brand even better. Frankfurt's not so far away. Maybe the next time I'm there, I'll arrange to visit Ronnefeldt's headquarters.


Was even more curious about Pure Tea. This was also a brand I'd heard of, but not yet tried. I like the concept of all pure, unadulturated tea, so I got a package of their White Downy Oolong Longkou. I brewed it as Gong Fu as I could in a conventional glass pot, but I can't wait to get home and try it in my Gaiwan. Huge light brown and green leaves with plenty of white tips, this Oolong has a both vegetal notes, as well as a taste of honey.


Tee Tea Thé isn't only a tea shop, though. It's a proper tearoom, as well. Plenty of reading material strewn about and people either chatting or studying diligently. If I lived near here, I could see this place becoming my second living room.

Teehandelshaus Benjowski

If rare tea is your thing, you really should consider going to the northern side of Berlin. It's a bit odd for me to recommend Teehandelshaus Benjowski (Danziger Straße 3, 10435 Berlin 030/4403 ext. 7571), since when I went to visit the shop, they'd already closed for the weekend.




Nevertheless, I'd heard so many good things. If one can tell anything from peering in the window right after closing time, I can assure you that they have an astonishing collection of Yixing teapots. Everyone I talked to about this shop said the selection of tea was similarly impressive. 

Berliner Teesalon

But the experience that saved my tea search in the German capital was the Berliner Teesalon (Invalidenstraße 160, 10115 Berlin 030/2804 ext. 0660). The people running this shop clearly know what they're doing. It's not only a tea shop with quite an unbelievable selection of loose-leaf tea, but there are tables and plush chairs where you can sit  and really savour your time drinking tea. It's an incredibly inviting atmosphere, and had I not shown up there half an hour before closing time, I'm positive I could've sat there the better part of an afternoon. 

There's all of the typical tea you'd expect: a few nice Keemuns, quite a selection of both Chinese and Japanese green tea. Yunnans, Darjeelings, Ceylons and Assams...I could go on, but instead I'll link to their website here, and you can go look for yourself. It's quite a list.

the salon of Berliner Teesalon

It was when I started chatting with the young woman running the shop that I found out about the good stuff. I'm often looking for a good way to get deeper into Pu-erh, so imagine my delight when I happened upon their Pu-erh cabinet. Gorgeous stuff in there. 

the bar at Berliner Teesalon

Partially because I wouldn't shut up about my Taiwanese Oolong obsession, she also showed me some Lagertee (stored tea) that I desperately wanted to try. There was also talk of Oolongs grown in Thailand - this is something I'd like to learn more about. I've certainly heard/read about Thai Oolongs, but not yet tried any. 

tea gear at the Berliner Teesalon

Looking back at what I've written so far, I don't think I've done justice to Berliner Teesalon's Japanese green tea selection. It was notably extensive. There's also plenty of tea gear if you want to get into Matcha. That in addition to Yixing teapots, as well as more conventional Western teapots and tea cups. If I had a tea shop/tearoom, I hope I'd have such a nice selection. I couldn't recommend this place more highly.

Finally, after quite a bit of walking over the several days I was in Berlin, I saved the Tadschikische Teehaus  ‎for last (Am Festungsgraben 1, 10117 Berlin 030/2041112). It's centrally located, but you'd never know it was there unless you were looking for it. You can find it inside the Palais am Festungsgraben right off of Unter den Linden  - just a few hundred metres from the Museum Insel.

in the Tadschikische Teehaus

Until you go up the staircase and locate the room outside the tearoom where everyone's taken off and left their shoes - until then, you can't actually believe there's a place here to drink tea. But there really is. Please persevere in your search. Finding the Tadschikische Teehaus a nice reward. No idea how authentic it is, but to me it looks like what a tea house in Tajikistan might.

sipping at the samovar

Although they have several tables, be prepared to sit on pillows on the floor. The tea is not only served in an assortment of funky teapots,  I had the Lommonossow-Tee (something purportedly from the 'eastern banks of the Black Sea'), but you can also order what's called a Russian Teezeremonie (tea ceremony), which appear to be not only tea served in a samovar, but a selection of delicious things to munch on. Actually, there was a full menu that I didn't even glance at, but I'm sure I would check it out if I were in Berlin more often.

ahhh...hot, delicious tea

King's Teagarden on the Kufürstendamm in Berlin

There are many way I can write about this shop and this tea seller's philosophies, but I've decided to make this about how one sells tea. It's easy enough to say, 'the customer is king' or 'the customer's always right', but what if said customer isn't knowledgeable? What if part of having a tea shop is educating your clientele?

But let's start with the shop where my thoughts on this began. If you search for tea online in Berlin, one of the first results you'll find is King's Teagarden on Kurfürstendamm. This shop has been here since before the Berlin Wall came down. Herr Werner F J Schmitt has been at this for more than thirty years and I'm sure he could tell you some stories about tea trends.

Actually, he told one story about a local tea place who'd been celebrated in the media for the brilliant idea to sell tea in to go containers. Tea isn't something to be hurried, he insisted, and of course I had to agree with him. There were a lot of things I agreed with. I'd looked at the King's Teagarden website before my visit, and he has some very strong beliefs when it comes to the preparation of tea.

I considered reprinting his Ten Golden Rules, but then I carefully reconsidered this. I'm trying to be as nice and polite as possible about this, but I don't want to attract his ire. So instead of posting his clever Ten Golden Rules, I'll simply link to them here.

He's very proud of his packaging, and from what I saw it looked like he had every reason to be. He told me another account of the history of the development of his 'special compound foil bag', and the high praise he'd gotten for how fresh his tea stays as a result of this state of the art technology. I've seen tea sold, as well as delivered, in some questionable packaging, so I was pleased to hear of this gift to the world of tea.

Let me be clear at this point: I was excited to come to Berlin partly because I wanted to see what sorts of tea shops and tearooms the German capital had to offer. I looked at the King's Teagarden website, and chuckled at the 'No Teabags Please' on the homepage. I thought to myself, 'This is going to be nice. This guy is passionate about tea. He's one of us.' Really, I did.

I hadn't read his website carefully enough. Some of the surprises that were in store for me would've been avoided had I really paid attention to his Provokation, which is exactly what it sounds like. If you scroll to the bottom of that list, and click on fordern Sie sie! then you can see his argument for all of these things. They're very meticulously and carefully thought out. I heard him quote some of these things verbatim while I was in his shop, and quite honestly I didn't know where to start.

So I went to this shop very excited, was not prepared for what happened next and really tried to be polite while I was on the premises. As I'm being right now. I think a lot of passionate tea lovers could get overly emotional about something like this and lose their composure. I have no intention of letting that happen.

A very brief recounting of the story is that I went into the shop, ordered both an Oolong and one of his tea blends that included mostly Ceylon and a bit of Darjeeling.

I must divulge that I respect good blends immensely. As he was making the tea, I perused the different varieties on offer and was really curious about them. Positively curious. I wanted to know what many of them tasted like, but especially the one he named 'Kanzlerin' after Chancellor Angela Merkel, which is described as 'black and white leaf tea, first and second flush Darjeeling with leaf buds and Oolong from China'. There were others...there were plenty others that struck my fancy. I couldn't even begin to name them all.

The tea arrived, and it was poured very nicely. Just so. And I sat down to savour it, and took the first sip. There was something about it...I'd never had such sweet Oolong. I really wondered if my taste buds were deceiving me. It was a delicious Dong Ding Oolong, but the sweetness was really doing my head in. After finishing the first cup, I turned to the black tea blend and had a sip of it. At that moment I was absolutely certain that there was sugar in the tea.

I've got nothing against sugar. Really. Later in the conversation, he mentioned something about the irrational opposition to sugar that many people have, and I wondered how often he'd had the argument where a customer insisted, 'I didn't ask for sugar in my tea.' But like I say, I'm not necessarily against it. And I'll try most things at least once. I finished the Oolong, and then asked if I could have a second infusion.

Here's where things took a turn for the worse. The feigned look of surprise on Herr Schmitt's face was probably well practised. As if no-one's ever asked him for a second infusion. He politely smiled and insisted that once tea has steeped in 100°C water (for exactly 3 minutes, as it states on his website) that all the best part of the tea was gone. The leaves were now useless.

I was a bit taken aback, but it was his shop. I had no intention of being rude. At this point I asked him about all the Chinese who infuse tea multiple times. He informed me that the people in China are very poor. As a rhetorical device he asked me if I was very poor.

This is the point I think some of you would just pay for the tea you'd drunk and leave the shop. Not in a huff. You might smile and nod and wish him a good day. Then step out of his shop, shake your head and think to yourself, 'Well, I need never go there again.'

Although that was my first inclination, I was really curious about some of his ideas. I asked about whether there was sugar in the tea and he not only said that he'd added sugar, but then made an analogy to the culinary world that still has me baffled (You can see this in his fordern Sie sie! section that I mentioned above). He posited that  no-one questions a chef when he enhances a dish with sugar. The logical corollary of this was that someone brewing tea should be given the same latitude.

This is where we had the spirited discussion about the above-mentioned irrational opposition to sugar, and I wondered about Diabetics who stumble into his shop unaware that they're getting sugar they hadn't expected. But that's just irrational, right?

Because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I'll say that I believe Herr Schmitt really sees himself as a serious tea expert. And like I said at the outset, he's been doing this for decades now. There's a guy on Steepster who says nice things about the Claudius blend from King's Teagarden. His long-term customers, in all likelihood, love his expertise and appreciate the authority that he has when talking about matters of tea.

Most importantly, he's not rooted his ideas on feelings. He mentioned a professor with whom he'd done significant research, and he wrote a book that's prominently displayed both in his shop and on his website which purportedly details and supports his philosophies of tea. He proudly stated that the book has had multiple printings and nothing he wrote had ever been disproven. Like I say, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Although I don't have thirty years in the tea business, I've learned a bit about tea. I wonder how many people who know something about tea have smiled and nodded as they were backing out of the King's Teagarden door.

Which brings me back to my original thoughts on all of this. How much of tea selling is educating your customer? Can one afford to disregard the conventional wisdom on tea preparation? What about if you've done a lot of research and have written a book about it? One than no-one has disproved?

It's a bit sad that I'll never get to try all those delicious tea blends that were on display in King's Teagarden. I suppose I just can't handle the sweet aftertaste. 

blindingly optimistic

I can feel my sense of taste coming back to me. For a few days there, I was drinking really strong (even bad tea) and getting nothing but a inconsequential jolt of caffeine. It was often loaded with Vitamin C and obscene quantities of honey, and I could barely tell. The consistency of the tea was a bit sludgier, so I guess the texture was noticeably different. But for a tea lover, having this sort of cold was the worst sort of punishment.

So here I am back in the saddle. There was plenty of Oolong, as well as a light, floral Darjeeling. It's so nice to stop coughing and sit down with a pot of tea and the paper. I stare off and think to myself, 'My goodness, I'm glad I don't talk about politics in my tea blog.'

There are incomprehensible things going on in the world, but here I am sipping on my Pasir Nangka Java. I wonder about another American politician making questionable choices, but I'm more embarrassed by the maelstrom of coverage it gets. Is any of it really necessary? Sometimes after reading an article about all of this I wish I could scrape the information away from my polluted eyeballs.

Instead I take another sip of tea and remind myself that a Bavarian politician had a love-child in Berlin several years ago. Of course, the press had a field day. They hunted the woman and her baby down and there was plenty of hand-wringing all around. Well-meaning columnists pondered whether he could keep his rather elevated position in the German political system.

Good thing this teablog's not about politics, huh?

So, I'm reminded of an article I read in Time this last week. The article was called Optimism Bias, and gave me plenty to think about.




Very roughly summarised, it said that despite all evidence that'd lead one to be morbidly depressed about the state of everything, we're hard-wired to believe things are going to turn out blindingly well. A losing streak has to end at some point. The storm was yesterday, and this is the first day of the rest of your life.






I don't know about all of that. But as I drain the last of this pot of tea, I weigh my options for the next tea I'll brew. Maybe there is something to this optimism, after all.