Between Korea and Italy: Jordie Confortini on Building a Life Around Tea
Introduction
What does it mean to build a career around tea without opening a tea shop or launching a tea brand?
For Jordie Confortini, the creator behind Earl J Tea, the answer sits somewhere between digital content creation, cultural communication, tea education and community building.
Her journey started with afternoon tea at her grandmother’s house in Italy and eventually led her to study Chinese tea, spend several months each year in Korea, meet tea masters and producers, and develop a particular focus on Korean tea culture.
Today, Earl J Tea brings together Jordie’s interest in tea, food, art, design and Korea. Through social media, Patreon, tastings and events, she is also exploring what a contemporary profession in tea can look like.
We spoke about how she built her community, whether content creation can become a viable profession, why Korean tea deserves more attention, and where she sees specialty tea developing in Italy.
1. Before Earl J Tea existed, what was your personal journey into tea?
I think I was always a tea person in some way. I remember having merenda, the Italian afternoon snack, at my grandmother’s house with tea. It was usually Earl Grey or black tea with lemon and cake. Of course, as Italians, the most important part was probably the cake rather than the tea!
But afternoon tea was already a sort of ritual for me. At that point, though, my image of tea was much more connected to British tea culture than to Asia.
Around three years ago, I decided to buy a gong fu cha tea set from an Italian girl who also offered private sessions explaining how to use it. She told me that she had studied tea with Eastern Leaves in Milan. I had no idea that there was this whole Asian approach to brewing tea. I immediately thought: What is Eastern Leaves? What is going on here? About a week later, I became one of their students.
That is very much my personality: I tend to go from zero to one thousand. In this case, it was a good thing because the course was quite intense and allowed me to approach tea on a much deeper level—from processing and chemistry to history, particularly Chinese tea history.
From there, I never really stopped. I started reading and exploring different Asian tea cultures, and tea became this enormous world that I wanted to understand.
2. Korea has become central to your work. Where did that fascination begin, and why Korean tea?
I was already travelling regularly to Korea before tea became such an important part of my life.
Visiting a tea house in Seoul or another Korean city was simply something I did while travelling.
Tea houses can feel almost suspended in time and space, so they were beautiful places to stop and rest. But at the beginning, I wasn't particularly interested in what tea I was drinking or in Korean tea culture itself.
Once I started studying Chinese tea, however, I suddenly thought: Okay, but what about Korea? What is happening there with tea?
I realised that I already knew more than I thought.
Tea is embedded in many aspects of Korean life—from temples and restaurants to traditional beverages made from roots, grains, herbs and other ingredients that Koreans also call tea.
The problem was that finding information, particularly in English, was difficult. So I started reading whatever books I could find, and eventually I realised that I needed to learn directly. Over the past couple of years, every trip to Korea has increasingly revolved around tea. I visit tea houses, festivals and producers, and I try to learn directly from tea masters.
For a while, I was often the only foreigner in these environments. I became this Italian girl who randomly appeared every spring asking questions.
There is also still a language barrier. I speak enough Korean for everyday life, but speaking with older tea masters can be challenging because they may use dialects or more traditional forms of language. But that difficulty has also become part of the journey.
3. What do you think European tea drinkers still misunderstand about Korean tea?
The first misconception is almost that Korea doesn't exist as a tea-producing country.
Even among tea enthusiasts, people often think about China and Japan but leave Korea out. In my mind, they form a sort of trio because I have become used to thinking about tea through those three cultures.
The second misconception is that Korean tea is essentially green tea.
Green tea is certainly important. It is probably the most researched and prestigious Camellia sinensis tea within Korea. But when you look at how people actually consume what they call tea in everyday life, there is a much broader universe of herbs, roots, grains and fermented preparations.
These beverages are deeply connected with food culture, traditional medicine and family traditions.
Someone might tell me, for example: "I don't know if you're going to like this tea because this is something my grandmother used to make when I was sick".
And when I taste it, I sometimes think: This is actually the soul of Korean tea.
There are flavours that are completely different from what Europeans associate with tea.
Fermentation is also extremely important in Korean food culture, and that knowledge extends to beverages as well. Different families or regions can have their own recipes, with different ingredients being boiled or fermented.
As a Western person, this can initially be frustrating because we want to classify everything. We want categories, systems and clear explanations. Over the years, I have realised that sometimes those categories simply don't belong there. And that is part of the beauty of Korean tea culture.
4. @EarlJTea has grown into a substantial online community. How did you build it?
When I started the account, I honestly didn't know exactly what I wanted to do with it.
I had just completed my tea course and initially thought about making educational posts based on everything I was learning. Very quickly, I realised that simply putting information into nice graphics wasn't really my thing. I found it boring.
Before Earl J Tea, I had a poetry account where I sometimes filmed my tea sessions while writing. I realised that I loved the visual side—the colours, the pouring, the movement.
So I thought: Maybe there are other crazy people like me who just enjoy watching tea being poured.
I started creating those kinds of videos, and eventually they became recognisable as part of my style.
That happened quite organically. I'm actually not particularly comfortable speaking in front of the camera, so I resisted the idea that I needed to create talking videos simply because they might perform better.
I had worked with social media before and knew that there is no guaranteed formula anyway. The algorithm is an animal of its own. You can follow every trend and still have a video perform badly.
So I mostly create what feels interesting to me.
Occasionally I'll make something more relatable or humorous around tea, and those videos can also work very well.
One of my videos featuring a tiny Korean teapot went extremely viral.
The ceramic artist who made it suddenly received so many requests that she had to close her commissions for months. It also reminded me that craft doesn't work like mass production. Ceramic artists are artists, not machines. That is something I try to respect in my content.
5. Your account has a very recognisable aesthetic. Where does that visual identity come from?
I have always been a very visual person. I'm a huge art and fashion lover, so aesthetics naturally influence many aspects of my life.
Tea itself is also deeply visual. When you experience traditional Asian tea, you're not only drinking the liquid. You're experiencing the ceramics, the textiles, the clothing of the person serving you, the materials in the space, the smell of the tea house.
All of these things become part of the experience.
I also grew up in an Italian environment where there was a strong awareness of art, design and beauty. My parents had a strong aesthetic sense, and I think I absorbed some of that.
What became interesting with EarlJTea was trying to bring together Italian and Korean aesthetics.
I use Korean ceramics, for example, but I might combine them with wooden objects made in my hometown or textiles from local producers. Many of the wooden pieces you see in my videos are actually made by my father.
There is also this contrast between what I perceive as Italian maximalism and the space, silence and emptiness that attracted me to Korean contemporary design and architecture.
My videos are often a conversation between those two identities.
I also don't own an enormous amount of tea ware. Often a video revolves around one piece and gives it space to shine. Sometimes, ironically, the video I spend the most time creating performs terribly, while another one that I don't particularly like becomes viral. You eventually have to accept that.
6. Can someone actually make a living as a tea content creator?
This is one of the questions I receive most often.
For me, the answer is complicated because I never started @EarlJTea thinking: "I'm going to become a content creator."
At the time, I had a regular office job and tea was something I was doing alongside it. I was also experiencing burnout, and eventually I left that job.
Tea and content creation became something that helped me reconnect with myself creatively.
Right now, Earl J Tea isn't my main source of income, but I would like it to become one.
It took me time to even believe that this could become a real profession. Not because I underestimate social media—I previously worked as a social media manager, so I know there can be significant economic value there—but because I wasn't sure whether being a content creator alone was what I wanted.
And I still don't think it is. I'm a millennial, and for me, in-person connection is extremely important.
That is one reason I created Patreon. It allows me to have a smaller group of people with whom I can interact more closely. We can have calls, talk about our lives and tea, and create something that feels more like a group of tea friends.
I also want to continue organising events and bringing people together offline.
For me, influence becomes particularly meaningful when someone tells me: "Thanks to you, I tried Korean tea, or I used your Seoul tea-house guide and discovered this incredible place."
Or when somebody comes to a tasting and says: "I never knew tea could taste like this. I always thought tea was boring."
Those messages mean much more to me than the number of followers.
The difficult side is that none of this is stable. One month doesn't look like another. You don't know whether a video will perform, whether the brands you want to collaborate with will contact you, or whether an event will attract the number of people you hoped for. You have to keep going despite that uncertainty.
7. What does the work behind your content actually look like?
There are really two different kinds of days.
When I'm filming at home in my studio, everything is much more controlled. I know where everything is and, over the years, I have developed a process that works for me.
Light is probably my biggest enemy. I live in a rainy city, and although I have artificial lights, I still prefer daylight. Then in summer, my studio can reach around 35 degrees because I don't have air conditioning, so filming becomes almost impossible.
When I'm in Korea, the process is much messier.
Sometimes I'm invited somewhere by an association or I'm collaborating on an event, so I know in advance that I need to film. But I spend roughly three months a year there, and I don't want every day to become a content day.
Sometimes I regret not filming something afterwards, but ultimately, I want to live my life rather than experience everything through the lens of my phone.
Some of the most interesting things I experience never appear on Instagram.
And I'm fine with that. When I spent time working at a tea farm this spring, I was happy that I managed to film enough to show people some of the work behind tea production.
But social media gives you perhaps twenty or thirty seconds.
Behind those thirty seconds, there might be someone waking up at five in the morning, struggling in the field, being uncomfortable filming in public, trying not to show people's faces, or simply not understanding what is happening because they are distracted by the camera.
You don't see that part.
After experiencing burnout in my previous work, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't create another job where I constantly forced myself to perform. Sometimes I wake up and simply know that I'm not filming that day.
I would rather listen to that than push against myself simply because social media tells me I should post.
8. How do you see the specialty-tea scene developing in Italy?
Italy is obviously a coffee and wine country. But it is also a food country, and I think that part is sometimes overlooked when we discuss tea. Italians are extremely curious about food and beverages. People grow up knowing a lot about ingredients, recipes and how food is produced.
At the same time, Italians can also be very difficult to convince that their tradition isn't the only possible tradition!
Those two sides coexist.
There will always be people who simply aren't interested in tea, and I don't think we need to convince everyone.
The people who come to my events are already curious. They are interested in discovering tea as a beverage, as a ritual, or sometimes as a way of creating a moment of silence and attention for themselves.
There is already a real tea community here.
I'm part of the Italian Tea Society, where we share knowledge about tea-producing countries and learn from people who travel and work directly with producers.
But from a hospitality perspective, there is still enormous room for growth. Even specialty coffee is relatively young here because Italy is traditionally more of an espresso culture than a specialty-coffee culture. But in cities such as Milan and Turin, new concepts are appearing, and some are introducing better teas as well. That gives me hope.
Where I personally want to move more is into contemporary food and gastronomy.
Recently, for example, I participated in a supper club with a Korean chef where we created a five-course dinner with five tea pairings. People in those environments are already used to experimentation.
Food is the language of Italy.
So I think tea can enter the Italian market very naturally through food, restaurants, chefs, supper clubs and pairings. I would love to work more in that direction.
9. As an Italian communicating Korean tea culture, how do you navigate the responsibility of representing another culture?
This is probably the hardest part of what I do.
Knowledge comes with responsibility, and communicating knowledge comes with even more responsibility.
My main concern is always to be honest about what I actually know. If I don't know something, I say that I don't know.
Sometimes I'll ask a Korean tea master a very technical question about the soil in a particular garden, for example, and they might simply not give me an answer. Maybe they don't know, or maybe that kind of question isn't approached in the same way culturally.
So when somebody asks me later, I can't invent an answer.
Another example is tasting. I once asked a master about the difference between a white tea produced in spring and the same type of tea produced in autumn. His response was basically: Just drink it. As a Western person, you're expecting an explanation: more oxidation, different aromas, more nuttiness, something analytical. Instead, the answer is simply: taste it and discover the difference yourself.
So when I organise tastings, I sometimes tell people exactly that story.
Let's taste it together and see what happens in our mouths. Maybe we'll find an answer. Maybe we won't.
That is part of communicating Korean culture too.
I'm also very clear that what I create isn't a traditional Korean tea ceremony. At the beginning of my tastings, I tell people: This is my contemporary interpretation of what I've learned about Korean tea.
I use Korean ceramics, but I might also use materials produced in my own Italian region. What I'm creating comes from my own experience of these two cultures meeting.
There's a Korean expression, uri nara, which means “our country.” Sometimes when I'm speaking with my Korean friends, I'll use uri nara and they'll ask me: Which country are you talking about—Korea or Italy? And at this point in my life, sometimes the answer feels like both. That doesn't mean I feel Korean.
It means that certain aspects of these two cultures now coexist in the way I experience the world.
I think the important thing when approaching another culture is always humility and respect.
Interestingly, Korean people rarely question why I'm interested in Korean tea. Most are surprised first and then grateful that someone from another country has taken such a strong interest in a part of their culture that has sometimes struggled to survive or receive recognition. The skepticism tends to come more often from Western audiences.
10. How do you define your profession today, and where would you like to take Earl J Tea next?
I don't think of myself simply as a content creator.
Cultural communicator is probably the description I feel most connected to at the moment. And it is also the role I feel the greatest responsibility towards.
I already worked with Korean culture beyond tea, so communication has been part of my professional life for some time. But I would also like to experiment more with the Italian food industry: tea pairings, collaborations with chefs and finding ways of elevating tea so that people can see it as a serious beverage option alongside other drinks.
I like that my work can have multiple identities.
Before tea, I worked as a teacher, an event manager and in social media. Tea somehow brought all of those previous experiences together.
So perhaps this emerging profession around tea doesn't need a single title. My eventual goal is to make a living from it.
Could that include a tea brand one day? Perhaps. But I don't think I would want simply to import Korean teas and put my name on them.
If I created something, I would want it to reflect my own journey and the intersection between cultures—perhaps incorporating tea, ceramics, textiles and other aspects of tea culture.
I also dream about having a tea house one day because I would love to have a permanent space where people could gather and create a real community.
Whether that happens in five years, twenty years or never, I don't know.
At the moment, I still feel like I'm at the very beginning of my tea journey. There are people around me who have worked with tea for forty years, while I have only been seriously exploring it for three or four. And that's actually exciting.
I imagine tea as a road through the woods. Sometimes it is bumpy and sometimes it is lonely. Then you meet people along the way and continue walking together.
I don't know exactly where that path is going to take me. But if it leads towards more knowledge, more curiosity and more respect for other cultures, that already feels like a good direction.
Photo Credit: Jordie Confortini
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