about satotea
Our Story
Prior to moving to Taiwan, I’ve had a career in real estate. I moved to Berlin to study Real Estate Management, intending to give my career a boost and dive into big city life. During my studies, I lived in India and later South Korea for some time. But the higher I climbed up the ladder and engaged in the rat race, the more I questioned the purpose of what I was doing. Getting up in the morning, cramming myself in the subway packed with grim-looking people, and then chewing through my day with meetings, phone calls, and a flood of emails just to push some numbers on a spreadsheet didn’t feel right to me. It actually felt very wrong.
I had everything but felt empty on the inside.
I gradually perceived Berlin — the city I was once so drawn to — as a fast-paced but cold, hostile, and aggressive concrete jungle. Of course that is not what it is: Every place on earth is equally good and bad, but one’s perception is the decisive element.
One day Shao introduced Taiwanese oolong tea to our life. She is from Taiwan and had relocated to Berlin in 2015 to explore the electronic music scene there. At that time we both felt lost and were seeking a viable path through life. We started to experiment with tea meditation and soon implemented it into our daily lives. We liked it. It created a pocket of silence before work and on the weekends in our otherwise so chaotic world.
This went on for many more months, until at some point it just clicked. It became clear that being creative with tea is what we want to focus on. We transformed our living room into a tea room. I eventually quit my job and took a yearlong break to realign. I then started to make my own music and we invited people to tea gatherings.
After one year had passed a decision had to be made: find another job and stay in Germany, or move to Taiwan and walk our own path. We chose the latter, not so much as reasoning as following our hearts. We left everything behind, pushed the reset button, and started all over in Taiwan in May 2021. We soon bought a motorbike and started to explore the island, searching for a place where we’d want to settle down. In just a few months, we put around 10,000 km on the clock, exploring as much as we could, from the mountains to the sea, across the countryside…
During this journey we also built our tea map of Taiwan. We sat down with countless farmers and tea makers, listening and learning from them. In this process it became obvious to us that most of Taiwan’s agriculture depends heavily on fertilizers and pesticides. The countless betel-nut farms in Taiwan’s west were an eye-opener and a huge shock for me. So we set out to find the cleanest, purest, and richest tea — sustainably farmed — that can be grown on Taiwanese land.
Around half a year later, during one of our motorbike trips across the island, we visited Taitung and immediately fell in love with it. The ocean, the clean air, the slow pace… all that felt so healing. Shortly after we relocated to our new place there. Finally we could settle down and fully focus on tea, meditation, and making music, photography and film.
Our tea room satotea is now the center of our life. We welcome people to enjoy some of the best loose leaf teas out there with us. Usually we brew in traditional gong-fu style, sit down, have a chat, and contemplate on life. Meditation retreats are also a part of what we have to offer.
Rationally our move to Taiwan doesn’t make sense to most people. But life isn’t all rational. Most of it can’t be planned for. So we decided to just follow our heart and contribute to a "better" society within our very limited means.
Our biggest motivation is to inspire others and to support local farmers who respect the land instead of exploiting it. That means growing tea with minimal human interference: No use of pesticides or chemical fertilizers, and no machine harvesting or pruning. Wild and natural farming means to take only as much as nature can restore without losing balance.
Being able to then share this tea with more people and raise awareness for the important topic of sustainable land use reminds us why we left our comfort zone. It reminds us why we bear the harsh climatic conditions along Taiwan’s east coast, the little black mosquitoes, typhoons and the countless noisy scooters that pass our house. But then there are those priceless moments, when we can sit down with people who are just as lost as we were when we left Germany. As we share a cup of tea with them in a safe and quiet space to rest their tired minds, a transformation takes place. They loosen up. We ease their pain. We provide relief for their body and soul.
Why Should You Care, Benefits
satotea is a state of mind. It can be obtained by raising one's awareness. Rich, clean tea from a trustworthy source is an excellent tool to practice with. Our unique teas have been thoughtfully curated with the intent to take you on a journey of personal growth and self-development. To form a mindful ritual or habit of preparing high quality loose leaf tea comes with a long list of benefits.
Our body and mind are the main tools for us to shape our life. Therefore it is paramount to take good care of our mental and physical health. Unfortunately the way of life most of us have adapted is characterized by an overflow of stimuli, ultra-processed "food" and a lack of quiet spaces to rest, digest and realign.
Clean tea grown on rich soil can help to overcome these challenges. Dedicating time to steep a cup of tea in silence, away from work emails, social media and all the other distractions is the starting point of your (healing) journey. Initially it can calm you down, take off the edge, relief stress, anxiety and other imbalances. However, change leading to personal growth takes time. In order to tap into the long-term benefits of high quality loose leaf tea, continuity and persistence are key.
Gradually your true self will arise from all the chatter inside your weary mind. Be aware though, that exposure to silence can feel overwhelming at first. The mind will try to fill the empty space that has been created all of a sudden. Don't let this sensation discourage you! The understanding of yourself and consequently others will deepen. Clarity and focus will show eventually.
Of course this is highly individual, but tea meditation can be a deep source of inspiration. Being detached from everything and present at the same time can spark a lot of creativity. Holding a gongfu tea ceremony or casually enjoying a delicious cup of tea with others is also a great way of contemplating on life or just having a chat.
Sit down with tea regularly and watch yourself living a more joyful life!
Our Values, Our Teas
We see sharing tea with you as an experience - not as a transaction. Our values stand above financial gains. This leads to slower but healthy growth of satotea and ensures the highest quality we can possibly deliver. Our approach is in line with the teas we select for you: Purity, outstanding craftsmanship and unique flavor profiles are the result of our careful diligence. Paired with sharing our knowledge in artistic ways and leaning into our personal life stories is how we give - and hopefully inspire you.
We cooperate with a small number of long-term partners in Taiwan that we have gotten to know over the years. They are family businesses with deep understanding in and respect for nature. Unlike bigger corporates their mostly natural and wild farming methods ensure sustainable land use without exploiting it. The relationship to our partners resembles more of a friendship than a business connection. We therefore do not ask for the lowest prices possible but for the fairest agreement we can come to.
The purity of our teas comes first and stands above flavor and technique. We don't mind sharing a wild farmed tea with you that comes from a young tea maker and therefore carries some imperfection. We are even excited to do so! But we would never offer you an industrially farmed tea soaked in chemicals, no matter how many awards it has won. To the point: We have a zero pesticide policy for all our teas. Many of our teas are even grown without the use of fertilizers. We don't do flavorings and deliver single farm / garden loose leaf only.
All our teas are hand-picked and produced in-house without outsourcing parts of the process to bigger factories. For our natural and wild farmed teas (Practice and Satori selection) even pruning and weeding is oftentimes omitted. Harvest times are limited - sometimes to as little as a single harvest per year - to give the tea trees sufficient time to rejuvenate.
We proudly offer a broad variety of loose leaf tea types and cultivars, with interesting and unique flavor profiles for you to explore. Since it is highly perceptive, we find it pointless to put flavor into much wording. However, there are a few characteristics that tie our curated art pieces together. They all taste clean, gentle, humble, mature, distinct and different - because different tastes better than better.
Start your journey!