Tea with Maren

Tea with Maren

Maren at Monzen, holding up two leaves and a bud and smiling at the camera

Hello friend 🌱

I’m Maren – freelance creative, matcha barista, tour guide, and professional tea nerd. I wear a lot of different hats, but at the end of the day I care about creating authentic connections grounded in sensory experience. We live in an increasingly fast-paced, isolating, and fragmented world, so I use sensory experiences like food and tea to help people slow down, and reconnect with the natural world and each other.

I’ve worked with tea in Japan, China, the US, and the UK, covering its full lifecycle from farming and processing to retail, wholesale, cafes, events, and tastings. I also have a Master’s degree in linguistics from Oxford, and my professional background ranges widely across UX/UI design, edtech, and specialty tea. For my CV and some examples of past work, see here.

Nowadays I’m pursuing flexible, independent creative work that centres my interests in tea, sustainability, social justice, and the natural world – see below for some ongoing projects. Get in touch if you’d like to work on something together – I’m always up for a new adventure!

These days you’ll find me…

Teaching & hosting tea

I founded Leaf & Buds Tea as a means to share my love of tea, hosting tea tastings, workshops, and other events, and sell tea and teaware in my online shop. I host tea tours at Obubu Tea Farms, teaching guests about tea farming, processing, and tasting. I also develop educational material and tutor the Matcha Power unit with the UK Tea Academy.

Farming & processing tea

I assist with all aspects of tea farming and production at Obubu Tea Farms. I also process my own small batches of tea where possible.

Writing about tea and everything else too

I write about intersection of farming, heritage, tourism, and education, specifically as these things manifest in specialty tea, in my newsletter Tea & all the rest.

Designing websites & creating digital content

I built and maintain the e-commerce platform for specialty tea vendor omcha. I also support several tea brands with social media content creation and copywriting.

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On Instagram:

Some cool things I’ve made when I’m not doing tea stuff! Flavour notes & ‘fishy’ teas - have you ever heard a tea described as ‘fishy’? This one’s a special tea for me - Yabukita Kabuse harvested from Jinja Oku 🌱 Spring is coming & the buds are sprouting 🌱 Daily walks in these blooms, these falling petals 🌸 Hand rolling last week - thank you @kenjistinson12 for the lovely photo of me untangling leaves 🥰 Deeply grateful for & inspired by the last few weeks’ tea learning in Hangzhou organised by the incredible @wen.zhuo.liu @liu_tea.art @alicia.jeanne and the China Tea Science Society. This course was so much more than I expected, both in terms of the scope and depth of content and hands-on tea processing experience, but also in engagement with ancient lineages of tea in China. I’ve hugged the Long Jing 43 mother tree, I’ve tried my hand at diancha tea art, I’ve traced the footsteps of figures like Lu Yu and Eisai across temples and mountains whose significance in tea is literally legendary. Some memorable moments from recent whisky tastings in Scotland. I love a peaty whisky, hence my Islay obsession, but this time the focus was Speyside, more on the sweet, caramel, toffee side. Some real highlights in there, including a few once-in-a-lifetime drams at Aberlour. Sunny weather putting me in the mood for kouridashi gyokuro these days… a long time favourite but never presented quite as beautifully as @obubuteafarms tea tour mar-tea-nis 🤤🌿
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On the Substack:

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Maren holding a bamboo tray of oxidising leaf, picking up a handful and smiling at it

Why tea with Maren?

Tea is the thread connecting so many of my passions, and it has been a constant companion to me throughout my life. I find endless joy and delight in it, it feeds my curiosity and constant learning, and my daily tea practice keeps me grounded in sensory experience and the present moment. Tea is also a global phenomenon, with rich cultural heritage across the world, and engaging with these traditions is a way to expand my own horizons.

Sharing tea with others can be an intensely personal and connective experience. Encountering flavours you’ve never experienced before, or learning about the fraught geopolitical history (and present) of something that can seem so ubiquitous and simple – these are vulnerable things, and deserve to be treated with intention and compassion. Tea sits at the intersection of so many of today’s Big Issues, but in a way that’s easily overlooked. My encounters in this space, and the growth and comfort I’ve found in it, have given me a passion for facilitating other folks’ experience here too.

Hence the name tea with Maren – I guarantee that a cup of tea with me is going to be way more than you expect.