Marcel has been drinking tea seriously for more than 15 years, and matcha has been part of that for more than 12 of them. His background is in mathematics and business consulting. Tea started as a side business, selling tea online, and turned into a nine-month sabbatical through India and China, where he followed tea to the places where it is grown and made. On that journey his attention widened from the leaf to the vessels, the tools and the people who make them.
Out of that came @tea.log, an Instagram account that today more than 23,000 tea drinkers follow, and later UNEARTHED, a gallery, studio and tea space in Munich for tea and teaware. In its first full year the gallery showed eight exhibitions with 28 artists and more than 1,000 pieces. Marcel chooses every maker himself and curates the pieces that come into the gallery. He travels regularly to Japan and China to meet the potters, glassmakers and tea producers behind them.
He is also a self-taught potter and has been making teaware for more than ten years, mostly in porcelain and stoneware. Since 2026 he designs the UNEARTHED glass line. Every piece starts as a 3D file, gets printed, filled with water and poured out, and is then changed one detail at a time and printed again before it goes to the workshop. That does not make him an artist, it makes him someone who knows what drips, what breaks and what actually gets used.
Photography has been part of this since 2018. He photographs the tea in the bowl, the makers at work in their studios in Japan and China, the tea fields under their shading nets and the pieces after they arrive in the gallery. The pictures on this page, in the shop and on @tea.log are his own, taken on the trips and in the gallery in Munich.
On the tea side he sources himself. Part of the range comes from farms he works with directly, part from tea experts whose work he trusts, among them Oscar Brekell, HOJO and Marukyu Koyamaen. He tastes every tea before it goes into the shop. He teaches the Specialty Matcha Workshop and the Journey of Tea tastings in Munich, in German and in English.
About a year ago he experienced a shift. After drinking matcha quietly and privately for more than a decade, he realised that matcha is no longer just a ceremonial drink or a product for niche tea lovers. It is now a trendy drink, to the dismay of many. Instead of resisting that, he decided to embrace it: not by compromising on quality or values, but by recognising the opportunity. If people are suddenly paying attention to matcha, there is a chance to guide that attention in a meaningful direction and to show that good matcha exists and that tea can be more than powder in a latte. Matcha is becoming a door, an entry point into tea for many, and he wants to hold that door open. Not to purify or to gatekeep, but to offer an alternative to the sugary green drinks people might start with: more sustainable for the tea farmers and much more complex than a coffee substitute.
The demand came from Munich's specialty coffee scene: cafés asked for a matcha that works in milk without sugar. He supplies around 20 cafés, bars and shops. He brings in matcha with a story and with the same specialty approach the cafés apply to their coffee: a named region, the cultivar, the harvest and a producer he has met, so that the dedication a café puts into its coffee is matched in its matcha. He has started exploring matcha as an ingredient in mixed drinks and as part of a new format for workshops and tastings, and matcha tonic is still his absolute favourite. Through this exploration he hopes to promote specialty tea as a whole, with matcha as the way in.
In 2026 ZDF filmed him as matcha expert for the documentary „Genuss mit Beigeschmack", a film about matcha, on the question how a customer can tell where a matcha comes from and what is in the tin.
