Monthly cupping club — twelve sessions, one tea each

A year of one tea at a time

The monthly cupping club is built on a single idea — that twelve teas, given a full morning each, will teach more than fifty teas rushed through in a weekend. Across fifty-two weeks we meet only twelve times, and the long quiet stretches between sessions are part of the pedagogy. You taste a tea, you live with it for four weeks, you brew it at home in three or four different ways, you take notes you eventually disagree with, and then you arrive at the next session changed.

Chen Hui Yi leads the cohort from Guangdong via video link, with in-person hosting at our Berlin room near Hermannplatz. Each Saturday morning runs three hours. We open with a quiet pour, then move into structured cupping — five grams, 150 ml porcelain, three infusions held at fixed times so that the group is tasting the same liquor at the same moment. After the structured cupping we re-brew the same leaf gōngfū style in a gàiwǎn (盖碗) and let the conversation widen.

The twelve teas are drawn from six categories — white, green, yellow, oolong, black (hóng chá, 红茶), and Pǔ’ěr (普洱) — and each category appears twice across the year. The pairing is deliberate. A Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) in month one returns as a Shòu Méi (寿眉) in month seven, so that you taste the same Fujian processing logic applied to different leaf grades. A Xī Hú Lóng Jǐng (西湖龙井) in month two answers a Tài Píng Hóu Kuí (太平猴魁) in month eight, and the comparison becomes intuitive rather than memorised.

The second half of the year is where the cohort earns its name. By month seven you have already cupped six teas seriously. You begin to notice that you are not learning teas — you are learning categories, processing decisions, and the small rhetorical moves that a tea maker uses to express a place. Chen Hui Yi structures the second six months to invert what you thought you knew. The Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香) Phoenix dancong you meet in month nine is brewed twice — once as the producer intended and once as a deliberate misreading, to show how easily a tea can be wronged by the wrong vessel.

Between sessions we send a small parcel — usually 15-20 g of the upcoming tea, vacuum-packed, with a tasting card and a short note from Chen Hui Yi. Members brew at home and post observations to a private thread on tea.community before the live session, so that we arrive already in conversation. We also keep a shared cupping log on tea.school which becomes a personal record of the year — searchable, exportable, yours.

The room in Berlin holds twelve in person; six more join via video from anywhere. We hold seats open for travellers and have had members join from Lisbon, Tbilisi, and Saint Petersburg across past cycles. Online members receive the same parcel by post, calibrated to arrive seven to ten days before the session.

The price covers everything — the twelve teas, the parcels, the room, the platform access, and a closing dinner in June 2027 for whoever can make it to Berlin. There is no certificate at the end. There is, instead, a notebook full of your own observations and a small group of people who have tasted the same twelve teas alongside you over a year. That tends to be enough.

Applications are read by Chen Hui Yi personally. We are not looking for prior knowledge — we are looking for the willingness to sit with one tea for a month before moving on. If that pace suits you, write to us. Equipment recommendations and a starter gàiwǎn are available through shop.thetea.app for members who arrive without their own.

Week by week

• Week 1 — Bái Háo Yín Zhēn (白毫银针) — Fuding, 2024 spring pick. Opening session — calibrating the palate to silver needle and the white tea baseline

• Week 2 — between-session brewing at home. Home practice — three infusions per evening, notes posted to tea.community

• Week 3 — between-session brewing at home. Second pass — testing water temperature variation at 75°C, 85°C, 95°C

• Week 4 — between-session brewing at home. Final week with silver needle — re-reading first notes before month two

• Week 5 — Xī Hú Lóng Jǐng (西湖龙井) — Shi Feng, pre-Qingming. Pan-fired green tea — chestnut aroma and the flat-leaf processing signature

• Week 6 — home practice. Glass-tumbler grandpa brewing versus gaiwan — same leaf, two methods

• Week 7 — home practice. Water minerality test — comparing local Berlin water to bottled low-TDS source

• Week 8 — home practice. Quiet week — reading on Hangzhou tea history before session three

• Week 9 — Jūn Shān Yín Zhēn (君山银针) — Dongting Lake yellow tea. Yellow tea and the mèn huáng (闷黄) smothering step — what makes it not-green

• Week 10 — home practice. Side-by-side with month one silver needle — yellow versus white at the needle grade

• Week 11 — home practice. Notes review — first quarter palate check-in with Chen Hui Yi by voice memo

• Week 12 — home practice. Rest week — no tea homework, just observation

• Week 13 — Ān Xī Tiě Guān Yīn (安溪铁观音) — modern green style, light oxidation. Entering oolong — the rolled-ball form and orchid aromatics

• Week 14 — home practice. Vessel comparison — porcelain gaiwan versus small Yixing pot

• Week 15 — home practice. Reading session — Fujian oolong processing notes from tea.degree archive

• Week 16 — home practice. Quiet week — sitting with the orchid finish

• Week 17 — Zhèng Shān Xiǎo Zhǒng (正山小种) — unsmoked Tongmu. Black tea origins — the first hong cha and its longan-honey signature

• Week 18 — home practice. Smoked versus unsmoked Lapsang — a small comparison sample is included

• Week 19 — home practice. Brewing temperature for hong cha — 90°C versus full boil

• Week 20 — home practice. Notebook review — halfway through the cohort

• Week 21 — Shēng Pǔ’ěr (生普洱) — Yiwu, 2018 cake. Raw puerh and Yunnan terroir — pairs with reading from puerh.app

• Week 22 — home practice. Aged versus young sheng — a small 2008 reference sample is sent

• Week 23 — home practice. Storage observations — humidity and the cake at home

• Week 24 — home practice. Quiet week before the second half

• Week 25 — Shòu Méi (寿眉) — 2019 Fuding, lightly aged. Return to white tea — leaf-grade and the case for ageing white

• Week 26 — home practice. Side-by-side with month one silver needle — same region, different grade

• Week 27 — home practice. Pressed cake versus loose Shou Mei — pressing and ageing

• Week 28 — home practice. Rest

• Week 29 — Tài Píng Hóu Kuí (太平猴魁) — Anhui, 2026 spring. Second green — flat broad-leaf style and the orchid green-tea note

• Week 30 — home practice. Comparison brewing with month two Longjing

• Week 31 — home practice. Pan-firing versus baking — Anhui green tea processing

• Week 32 — home practice. Reading — green tea regions across the country

• Week 33 — Méng Dǐng Huáng Yá (蒙顶黄芽) — Sichuan yellow. Second yellow — Sichuan technique and a softer mèn huáng

• Week 34 — home practice. Yellow tea is rare — discussing why, with sources from tea.school

• Week 35 — home practice. Palate calibration before the dancong session

• Week 36 — home practice. Quiet week

• Week 37 — Mí Lán Xiāng (蜜兰香) Phoenix dancong — Wudong mountain. Honey-orchid dancong — the right and wrong way to brew it

• Week 38 — home practice. Comparison with month three Tieguanyin — two oolongs, two provinces

• Week 39 — home practice. Single-bush dancong economics — reading from tea.travel field notes

• Week 40 — home practice. Rest

• Week 41 — Diān Hóng (滇红) — Fengqing, golden-bud. Yunnan black — large-leaf hong cha and the cocoa-yam profile

• Week 42 — home practice. Side-by-side with month five Zhengshan Xiaozhong

• Week 43 — home practice. Same Yunnan leaf, different processing — sheng versus hong

• Week 44 — home practice. Notebook compilation week

• Week 45 — Shú Pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) — Menghai, 2015 brick, Wò Duī (渥堆) processed. Ripe puerh and the wet-piling fermentation — closing the puerh arc

• Week 46 — home practice. Sheng versus shu — month six and month twelve in conversation

• Week 47 — home practice. Brewing shu in clay versus porcelain

• Week 48 — home practice. Final notes — preparing for the closing session

• Week 49 — closing dinner preparation. Reviewing the twelve teas — what stayed, what surprised

• Week 50 — closing dinner preparation. Members select one tea each to share at the dinner

• Week 51 — closing dinner in Berlin. A year together — twelve teas, eighteen people, one long table

• Week 52 — after — next steps. Optional onward — applying to deeper cohorts via tea.degree

What’s included

• Twelve live three-hour sessions across the year, Saturday mornings 10:00–13:00 CET

• Twelve 15-20 g tea parcels posted to your address, vacuum-packed with tasting cards from Chen Hui Yi

• A starter cupping set on request — five porcelain cups, timer card, weighing scoop (also available via shop.thetea.app)

• Private cohort thread on tea.community for between-session notes and questions

• Personal cupping log hosted on tea.school, searchable and exportable as PDF at year-end

• Two reference samples sent during the year — aged Shou Mei (2019) and aged sheng (2008) for comparison

• Closing dinner in Berlin in June 2027 for members who can travel — food and tea included

• Quarterly voice-memo palate check-in with Chen Hui Yi

• Optional discount on follow-on travel cohorts through tea.travel for graduating members