Deerland Tea

Hamburg-based Taiwanese tea studio and importer, specializing in single-origin specialty teas from Taiwan for gastronomy, culture projects, and serious tea drinkers.

For UNEARTHED, Deerland Tea acts as a bridge to Taiwan: providing carefully selected lots, context, and sensory tools that make it easier to work with Taiwanese tea at a high level – from open tastings to focused workshops and festival programs.

Discover their tea

Background

Deerland Tea is a Hamburg-based Taiwanese tea studio dedicated to specialty teas from Taiwan (Formosa), working between Hamburg, Berlin and Taiwan.
The brand was founded in 2019 by a small Taiwanese team: a tea sommelier, a microbiologist and a social designer, all with deep roots in Taiwan’s historic tea culture.
Many team members grew up in Taiwan’s tea regions and have been connected to tea culture all their lives; several are trained specialty tea tasters and certified evaluators (TBRS).
Deerland works directly with family-run gardens and local producers in Taiwan, moving as close as possible to origin rather than trading through large intermediaries.
Sourcing is strictly seasonal: teas are selected in step with Taiwan’s harvests, with full transparency about cultivar, elevation, region and producer.
Every tea goes through internal quality control – at least one standard cupping and multiple small-pot sessions – and is then classified using Deerland’s own “Deerland Grade” system for communication with gastronomy partners and tea clients.
In addition to sourcing, Deerland roasts and refines selected teas themselves, especially oolongs and black oolongs, drawing on long-term experiments in a family garden in the Luye (“Deerland”) region in southeastern Taiwan.
Beyond trade, Deerland designs tastings, workshops and food-and-tea concepts for museums, festivals and restaurants – from storytelling tasting menus at MK&G Hamburg to collaborations with Berlin Tea Festival and the Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe.
Their focus is not only on flavour, but also on how tea culture can be translated into contemporary contexts: gastronomy, design, performance, and cross-disciplinary art projects.

“Discover Taiwanese Tea to its fullest. Mapping the world of specialty tea for connoisseurs."

About Deerland Tea (Taiwan, Taiwan)

Deerland Tea is a Taiwan-rooted, Hamburg-based tea studio working exclusively with specialty teas from Taiwan. The team brings together tea sommeliers, scientists and designers who grew up in Taiwanese tea regions and later trained as professional evaluators. Their shared goal: to make the depth of Taiwan’s tea culture tangible in Europe, without diluting it.

They source directly from small, often family-run gardens and trusted producers in Taiwan. Selection follows the harvest rhythm: each season, they cup new lots, compare cultivars and elevations, and only bring in teas that meet their own sensory and technical criteria. Every tea is tested multiple times – standard cupping, small-pot brewing, different water parameters – before it enters the collection and receives a Deerland Grade as a shared language with chefs, baristas and tea buyers.

Deerland also works as a cultural mediator. In museums, theatres and festivals they design tastings, food-pairing menus and narrative experiences that use tea to talk about migration, history and contemporary Taiwan – for example at MK&G Hamburg, for Berlin Tea Festival and in cooperation with the Taiwanese Specialty Tea Society in Europe.

At UNEARTHED, Deerland Tea appears as a partner in crime: a counterpart on the tea side that shares a similar approach – small scale, high context, and a long-term commitment to craft and culture rather than trends.