The Moychay Tea Club Amsterdam is heaven for tea lovers
Are you a true tea lover, always curious to taste new, high-quality teas and learn more about Asian tea culture? Then a visit to The Moychay Tea Club in Amsterdam is highly recommended.
The Moychay Tea Club Amsterdam is a tea shop, tea bar and tea salon with three tea ceremony rooms on the Rozengracht in Amsterdam. This tea empire — because that is what you could easily call this place — was founded by Sergey Shevelev, a former Georgian DJ and passionate tea lover. More than that: he considers being an ambassador for tea culture one of his most important goals in life.
Tea from six hundred small farmers
In search of the best tea, he travelled through all of China’s tea regions for ten years, reaching the most remote villages to see how tea grows, how it is harvested and how it is processed. He now has 27 tea houses, one of which is in the Netherlands. The tea sold in the tea houses comes from six hundred small farmers. Sergey wants to produce as much tea himself as possible instead of buying it in, and he has started doing so in Georgia, Vietnam and Thailand.
Getting high on tea
At Moychay, you can buy more than 250 different types of tea from thirteen different countries, including special, lesser-known teas such as white tea, yellow tea, oolong, fermented black tea and red tea. The Rolls-Royce of teas is Taiwanese Oolong. Moychay also sells forty teas that have been aged for a very long time, just like wine; some date back to 1974 (!) and cost around €100 per 50 grams. These are offered in a flat, round shape, from which you buy a cut, pie-shaped piece. You can also buy very strong tea here that gives you energy as an alternative to drugs — getting high on tea: how good does that sound?
From high tea to tea on the go
Moychay also organises tastings and offers various tea ceremonies in the Chinese, Japanese or Taiwanese tasting rooms, led by experts. There is a high tea, and for those in a hurry, tea to go is available at the tea bar at the entrance to the shop, prepared using an Italian coffee machine. You can also take a seat at the tea bar for a refreshing non-alcoholic tea cocktail.
Tea lovers unite!
Moychay is located at Rozengracht 92H in Amsterdam and is open Monday through Sunday from 10:00 to 20:30.
