New European Tea Festival Organizer

Wenzhuo Liu

Maria was born and raised in Montevideo, Uruguay. She is a descendant of a European family that immigrated to South America in the 19th century and has European ancestry from France, Spain, Italy, and England. Maria started drinking tea since she was young. Her grandmother came from England and was once a well-known tailor. Maria recalled that she often went to her grandmother’s studio after school, where there were always British porcelain teapots waiting for her. After reaching adulthood, Maria went to Bordeaux, France to study and work in digital communication, even establishing her own company. During this period, she was exposed to tea and tea utensils from China and Japan, initially as a hobby during her leisure time. At the age of 38, she decided to close her agency, leave Bordeaux, and return to South America to open a tea house.

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Add Value to Quality Tea – AVPA

Wenzhuo Liu

Ksenia Hleap has been working at the Agency for the Valorization of Agricultural Products (AVPA) in Paris, France for 7 years, mainly responsible for communication and development work. According to her introduction, the AVPA Association helps agricultural producers increase the value of their products and has a good international reputation. The “Tea from the World” tea competition has been held for eight times, and the winning products will be recognized by multiple partners and contribute to marketing. AVPA welcomes more high-quality tea and producers from China to participate in the future. 

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A new Attempt by Tea Industry Professional in Hamburg, Germany

Wenzhuo Liu

Marten Verch works for food related books and is currently employed by a publishing house in Hamburg, Germany. He has work experience in tea trading companies in Hamburg and the German Tea Association. In recent years, Marten has started planting tea trees and has plans to expand tea gardens in the future. He expressed his expectations for the development of Hamburg tea culture, while sharing his understanding of the significance of the German Tea Association in the industry, as well as the opportunities and challenges that tea brands need to face in expanding overseas markets.

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British Tea People in Denmark

Wenzhuo Liu

Alexis Kaae is from the UK and currently resides in Denmark. She used to be a mechanical technician and now runs a physical and online tea shop, Simply Tea, providing educational services. She is also developing a tea plantation. In 2007, Alexis traveled to tea regions in China to study tea. In 2014, she co founded the Danish Tea Association with several outstanding ladies from the Danish tea industry. In 2017, she became the Vice President of the European Specialty Tea Association, and in recent years, she has also joined the European Tea Association and other organizations. Alexis is active in the European tea industry, frequently invited to participate in tea events in China.

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International Tea Consultant- Nigel Melican

Wenzhuo Liu

Nigel Melican currently resides in Ireland and is semi retired. At the age of 83, he has been running his own tea consulting company over 30 years. He once worked as a product developer and trouble-shooter at Unilever Research. He was a botanist who accidentally entered the tea industry in the 1980s and worked in multiple tea producing countries to assist in establishing and improving tea factories. In 1990, Nigel opened his own tea consulting company Teacraft, which involved businesses in 31 countries on six continents, Asia, Africa, North and South America, Australia, and Europe. In 2018, he also led the establishment of the European Specialty Tea Association to promote multi-party connections in the tea industry chain. Nigel has focused his company’s efforts over the past decade on assisting small tea farmers and factories, and encouraging tea brands to develop international markets.

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French Tea People Promote Chinese Pu’er Tea

Wenzhuo Liu

French man William Osmont settled in Yunnan, China, with a background in agricultural machinery education. He helped his wife Yubai, a tea farmer, whose family has been tea farmers for generations, William establish the Yunnan tea brand Farmerleaf and gradually expand into the international market. William mainly promotes through social media. In 2023, he organized a European tour to promote his own brand of tea, holding small meetings with local tea enthusiasts in more than ten cities across Europe.

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American works as Tea Makers in Europe

Wenzhuo Liu

Photo Andy LeGresley

Alicia Gentili, an American with a Bachelors degree in Socioe conomics, gradually transformed into a new tea maker in Europe through multiple encounters with tea. As a project manager, Alicia worked at a tea plantation in Jersey, UK for over two years, accumulating knowledge of tea production through practical experience. In 2022, she began providing tea processing services and consulting Alicia Gentili Tea Consulting in Europe, and during the tea season, she went to tea plantations of customers in various European countries to help with tea processing and production.

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Tea Science Popularization Social Media Expert- Tea Science PhD Student

Wenzhuo Liu

Dylan Rothenberg, a doctoral student at South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou, is from the United States and studies soil health and microorganisms in organic tea plantations. 2023-2024 is already his last academic year as a doctoral student. After graduation, he plans to continue his beloved research work. In his spare time, Dylan is also a social media tea expert, Wu Mountain Tea, teaching Chinese tea and tea culture in English. He obtained the qualification of an intermediate tea evaluator and also translated the terms of sensory evaluation of tea by himself. He hopes that more people in the world will understand the system for evaluating tea and promote its internationalization.

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Dutch Tea Plantation- Het Zyuderblad

Wenzhuo Liu and Linda Cebrian Rampen

Good news for Chinese readers: related article has been published in the July 2021 <Tea Times 茶博览> tea magazine in Chinese, 观茶者专栏-Het Zyuderblad茶园:分享一杯荷兰好茶”. 


Het Zuderblad tea plantation is the first tea garden in the Netherlands. Linda Cebrian Rampen is the owner of this tea garden. The tea garden is located in Soerendonk, in the south of the Netherlands, near the Belgian border. Linda’s family has run the farm for generations. As the only daughter of her parents, she inherited the farm and developed a tea garden through her own efforts. After a lot of reading research and travel investigation in the previous two years, Linda successfully achieved the first goal of the tea garden in 2015, planting 120 tea trees for outdoor experiments. In 2017, she planted 2000 tea trees in the second batch, and continued to expand in 2018, planting 1000 more tea trees in the garden. The next batch of tea seedlings of different varieties are cultivated in the greenhouse in order to select tea varieties that are more suitable for the Dutch climate. Linda is confident about the future of her tea garden.

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Tea Magazine in German- Olaf Tarmas

Article Wenzhuo Liu

Photo Odile Hain

Olaf Tarmas is a professional journalist in Hamburg, Germany. As a student, he worked in a tea shop and became attached to tea. During his career and personal travel, he visited several tea producing places and traditional tea drinking areas in Asia and Europe. He, together with some tea people in German speaking areas and several organizers of Berlin Tea Festival, launched the first German tea magazine t-Magazin in March 2022. In April, C*Space, a shared space in Berlin, Germany, held a press conference for the magazine. In October, it helped organize the Pop-up event Berlin Tea Festival.

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