Inside the Tea Trade: Max of Mount Everest Tea on Sourcing, Matcha and the Future of Speciality Tea
Introduction
What does the tea market look like from the perspective of someone buying, tasting, blending and supplying tea every day?
During a visit to the facilities of Mount Everest Tea in Hamburg, I walked around with Max to discuss a side of the industry that consumers rarely see. From professional tea tasting and sourcing to climate change, private label, the matcha boom, changing consumer expectations and the future of tea in Europe, our conversation moved far beyond what is currently trending on social media.
It also offered a rare look behind the scenes of a tea wholesaler operating between long-standing trading traditions and a rapidly changing market.
1. Max, how did you first enter the tea industry, and how did tea become your profession?
I actually came into tea through Hamburg’s traditional trading culture.
After school, I initially wanted to study, but I come from a fairly traditional family, and the advice was: first learn a trade. In Hamburg, it is very common to do an apprenticeship combining work in a trading company with business school, so I chose wholesale and foreign trade.
I knew I wanted to work with a product I could actually touch and enjoy. Chemicals or industrial components did not appeal to me, so food seemed much more interesting.
At that time, I was not particularly knowledgeable about tea. I drank perhaps slightly more tea than the average person my age, but I certainly was not a tea nerd.
I started my apprenticeship at Dethlefsen & Balk when I was 19. The business school itself was very tea-oriented. Half of the final exam was commercial theory—Incoterms, customs, international trade—and the other half was tea.
One part of the examination involved recognising around 20 teas purely from the dry leaf.
From the first day, we were constantly learning about tea and quality. I remember one of my first Assam tastings: there were around 200 different Assams in front of me. Afterwards, my tongue was almost dead.
At first, they all tasted the same to me.
Then I listened to the experienced tea tasters describing one as more malty, another more jammy, sweet or light, and I became curious. I wanted to understand how they were recognising those differences.
After around two and a half years, Thomas Dienemann and Thomas Schulze, the two senior tea tasters at D&B, offered me the opportunity to become a junior tea taster and start buying tea with them.
That was really the beginning. I travelled to origins, met suppliers and spent a lot of time preparing samples. When you are the youngest tea taster, it is a little like being the junior person in a kitchen: you prepare the teas, clean everything and prepare the next tasting.
But that also means you taste an enormous number of teas.
Over time, you begin to understand not only quality, but value. We often say every tea is good in its own way; our commercial role is to decide what the right price is for a particular quality.
That does not always correspond with the price a producer or factory has in mind, so negotiation is also part of the profession.
In 2019, I joined Kirchner, Fischer & Co., the mother company behind Mount Everest Tea, as a tea taster. I had always been interested in experiencing a family-owned company where the owner was still actively involved in the business.
After about half a year, Jens von Riegen asked whether I would take on more responsibility. That is how the role gradually evolved from buying and tasting into management.
2. What does being a professional tea taster actually mean?
Tea taster is not really a protected or licensed profession. Technically, anybody can call themselves a tea taster.
But in the traditional Hamburg tea trade, there is still an informal system of apprenticeship. Ideally, you have a senior tea taster who may have 30 years of experience taking you through the world of tea and sharing that knowledge with you.
Experience and repetition are fundamental.
I also think it is important to distinguish a tea taster from a tea sommelier. We are dealing with the same product, and both professions require passion, but the commercial responsibilities are different.
For a professional tea taster working in trade, memory is extremely important.
You need to remember what last year's quality tasted like. You need to maintain consistency. Tea is a natural agricultural product, so there will always be differences between seasons and batches.
If you are producing an English Breakfast or a customer's established blend, you need to know how to adjust for those natural variations without completely changing the product.
At the same time, you need to understand pricing.
Our job is therefore somewhere between sensory evaluation and commerce. We have to represent the interests of suppliers while also representing the interests of our customers.
At Mount Everest and Kirchner Fischer, we have several tea tasters and divide responsibility between different origins and product categories. The first tasting can be quite democratic—we all discuss the teas we prefer—but ultimately one person is responsible for making the final purchasing decision within their area.
And we consider fruits, herbs and spices part of this expertise as well. Buying high-quality botanicals is just as important to the final product.
3. We are sitting inside the Mount Everest facilities. What actually happens to a tea from sourcing to the finished product?
Everything starts with the raw material.
As a wholesaler, that is one of the areas where we believe we can add real value. Today, anyone can buy one bag of tea somewhere. Globalisation has made sourcing accessible.
The question is: what do you contribute to the supply chain?
Kirchner Fischer has been in the tea trade since 1793, and with some gardens and suppliers, the relationships go back generations. That creates a very different level of trust.
We are not afraid of transparency. We tell customers where their tea comes from. We travel with customers to tea gardens and introduce them directly to suppliers.
We have never experienced a situation where a customer met the producer and then decided they no longer needed us. If you provide genuine value within the supply chain, transparency should not be threatening.
From a practical perspective, our challenge is very simple to describe and quite difficult to achieve: we need a food-compliant product, at the right price, in the right quality and at the right time.
Usually, every morning, at least one of those parameters is causing a problem.
When we purchase tea, contracts are generally based on approval of a sample. First, we carry out the organoleptic evaluation: visually and through tasting, the tea has to correspond to what we approved.
After that, samples go to an official laboratory for analysis. Depending on the product, that can include pesticides, herbicides and microbiological testing. Only then do we proceed with purchasing and importing.
We also offer blending and packaging, so we see ourselves as a kind of one-stop solution.
Interestingly, blending itself is not necessarily the most difficult part. We are very open about showing people how we blend. The difficult part is having the correct raw materials, with the correct specifications, available consistently.
During the facility visit, we also saw how quality control continues after production. Every tea that is blended or packed is sampled and cupped again.
No tea leaves the company without being tasted. It requires additional time and slows the process down, but it is one of the reasons we have very few quality complaints.
4. How has tea sourcing changed in recent years?
Climate change is probably one of the largest changes affecting sourcing. Even within the same garden, we can now see quite dramatic quality differences over the course of only one or two months.
Another major change is global competition for high-quality tea.
There was a time when Europe could generally pay the highest price for good tea. That is no longer necessarily the case.
North African markets, Asian domestic markets and African consumers themselves are increasingly buying better-quality teas.
As European buyers, we are therefore competing for quality with markets that were much less important competitors in the past. And then there is matcha.
This year has been particularly unusual.
We primarily work with loose-leaf tea, and the matcha boom is influencing the availability of Japanese leaf tea very directly. Material that might previously have become sencha or gyokuro can instead be processed for tencha and ground into matcha. Where previously we might have received hundreds of Japanese samples, the number has fallen dramatically.
The demand for matcha is effectively changing what is available to the rest of the tea industry. It is also changing purchasing practices.
For many Camellia sinensis teas, traditionally you would receive samples and then decide what to buy. Now, in certain cases, you may need to secure production much earlier.
That creates a cash-flow challenge because you are committing financially before knowing exactly what the finished tea will be like.
Will the pesticide analysis be acceptable? Will the leaf size be right? Will the sensory quality meet your requirements?
Those are risks the industry increasingly has to manage.
5. From your position as a B2B wholesaler, what tea trends are you seeing before they reach the final consumer?
One trend we are very happy to see is increasing demand for single-invoice and speciality teas.
But there is another very visible trend: colour.
Products that are visually striking are becoming easier to sell, especially to younger consumers.
We now work with ingredients such as blue spirulina, beetroot, dragon fruit and different powdered botanicals. We can also apply natural powders to dry ingredients here in the factory.
A traditional blueberry-flavoured tea may still sell perfectly well, but if you create a visibly blue blueberry tea, suddenly a new customer notices it and asks, “What is that?” In a TikTok and Instagram environment, appearance matters.
Functionality is another growing area.
We are seeing requests for teas with added caffeine, melatonin and vitamins. There are also enquiries around protein and collagen.
Some ingredients are technically easier than others.
If you need only one milligram of melatonin per serving, for example, that can be incorporated quite differently from collagen, where you need several grams to reach a meaningful nutritional dosage.
We are already producing matcha blends with protein powder for some customers and sometimes using ingredients such as beetroot or spirulina to create different colours.
This market is growing, particularly within retail and e-commerce.
From our own perspective, we are still tea drinkers at heart, so we watch the category with interest and sometimes ask ourselves where the boundary between tea and functional product will eventually sit.
6. Apart from matcha and functionality, what are customers asking for today that they were not asking for five or ten years ago?
Flavoured tea is still extremely important.
Depending on how you define the market, around half or more of European tea consumption is still flavoured products.
But what customers expect from flavouring has changed.
Five years ago, many customers simply wanted something that tasted good.
Today, there is much more demand for natural flavours, oils and organic-certified options.
Transparency has also become a major requirement.
Customers want to know where the hibiscus comes from. Why are we using Egyptian peppermint? Why might another blend use German mint? Why is this ingredient better than one from somewhere else?
Storytelling is becoming important, but it needs to be supported by something tangible. Consumers increasingly want proof.
And I think companies are willing to stand behind a product—and consumers are prepared to pay a little more—when they understand where it comes from and why the quality is different.
Coffee, beer and wine have been far ahead of tea in this respect. People may know the farm, origin or region behind their coffee, while tea has historically lagged.
Now it is catching up quite quickly.
We are also seeing more interesting teas appearing in formats that go beyond loose leaf. Oolong or better-quality Japanese teas, for example, are gradually moving into pyramid bags and other more convenient formats.
Consumers are better educated than they were before, and brands increasingly need to differentiate their assortments.
7. Private label is an important part of the Mount Everest business. What happens when somebody comes to you wanting to create their own tea?
It varies enormously.
Some customers arrive with a very detailed brief. Others simply tell us, “I want a black tea with grape.”
Then we start asking questions.
What price point are you targeting? Which origin? Conventional or organic? Do you require certifications such as Rainforest Alliance? What retail price do you have in mind? What packaging format are you planning to use?
Packaging is important because an ingredient suitable for loose leaf may not work in a pyramid bag.
Some clients want an organic version of one of our conventional products. Others come with a very regional idea.
We have had clients in France, for example, who wanted to use rose petals from a particular local rose variety. In that case, we can source the ingredient specifically for them.
But we also have to be commercially realistic.
We might explain that a particular certification is unavailable or that a specific ingredient will make the product extremely expensive. Then the client can decide whether that detail is important enough to justify the cost.
From there, product development becomes a little like cooking.
The tea tasters create the recipe, our colleagues prepare a hand blend, we cup it, adjust it, and normally create two or three internal versions before sending something to the client.
Sometimes we invite clients here and work on the product together. We can also handle packaging.
We work with packaging suppliers across many different formats, and because we purchase packaging for both larger and smaller customers, we can often access more competitive conditions than a small brand approaching the supplier independently.
For matcha, for example, we can select the grade, decide the gram weight and fill the product into tins here.
We can help technically with artwork and print files, although we generally tell brands that they should know their own visual identity. We can make sure the packaging works, but the brand should know which colours and fonts represent it.
8. What makes a tea brand commercially sustainable today?
The first questions are not really specific to tea.
What is your USP?
What do you do better than your competition?
Who exactly is your customer?
From our perspective, one of the most interesting customer groups for premium food products at the moment is approximately 25 to 35 years old.
So when developing a product, you need to ask yourself what this customer actually wants.
You also need to give people the opportunity to taste tea before asking them to buy it.
That could mean serving tea in your own shop, organising tastings, offering tea education, doing online tastings or sampling through retail.
Tea is something people need to experience.
Design also matters. The product needs to be recognisable. And then, of course, it needs to taste good.
One challenge in speciality tea is that the passionate tea professionals developing products often have very different preferences from the average consumer.
What I personally love does not necessarily correspond with what the market wants.
A sustainable assortment should contain teas you are deeply passionate about, but it should also contain products that people simply enjoy drinking.
Right now, many successful products are bright, colourful and easy to understand. If raspberry is written on the package, the consumer expects it to smell and taste recognisably like raspberry.
Complexity is not always the commercial goal.
There is also a classic commercial principle: you need an expensive product and a cheaper product in order to sell the one in the middle. You see it in wine, whisky and almost every premium beverage.
A speciality tea store should absolutely have rare teas—something unusual that customers cannot find everywhere. But that does not mean those should be the only products you sell.
Everybody starts somewhere. If you build trust with the customer, you can take them on a tea journey.
For someone who has only been drinking fruit or herbal infusions and says, “I want to try real tea,” you could immediately offer an exceptional gyokuro or a Chinese spring tea. But sometimes a milky oolong is a much better first step.
They taste something sweet and approachable. Then they return and ask where that milky character comes from. You explain tea processing. Next time, perhaps they try another oolong without that flavour profile. Suddenly, they are on the journey.
9. Tea still struggles in European hospitality. What would need to change for restaurants, cafés and hotels to take it more seriously?
From a commercial perspective, tea is actually very attractive for hospitality because the margin can be excellent.
One of the easiest ways to communicate this is not by talking about the price per kilogram or per 100 grams, but by calculating the price per litre.
A tea that sounds expensive at €30 per 100 grams may still represent a very small ingredient cost per litre. Once a restaurateur starts thinking in those terms—and compares that cost with the selling price per cup—the commercial argument becomes much clearer.
There is another opportunity as well: declining alcohol consumption.
Restaurants are actively searching for sophisticated non-alcoholic alternatives.
Tea can play an important role here.
You can make cold brews. You can produce sparkling tea. You can create iced tea. You can work with flavours and botanicals. It is a remarkably flexible ingredient. The problem is perception.
Consumers often feel they are paying five euros for hot water and a tea bag that somebody has placed next to the cup without much care. That experience does not communicate value.
If, instead, someone discovers a restaurant serving genuinely good tea, tea drinkers tend to be extremely loyal. They will return, and they will tell other tea drinkers.
Coffee has benefited enormously from this kind of communication and visibility. Tea has historically done much less of it.
That is one of the reasons we value organisations such as the European Speciality Tea Association.
Traditional trade associations often do very important work around regulation, analytics and commercial interests, but there is much less room for the end consumer.
Speciality tea organisations can help create education and build that connection between the trade and the people actually drinking the product.
10. From Hamburg, at the heart of Europe's tea trade, where do you think the European tea market will be in ten years?
I think the market will probably become less fragmented—not necessarily in terms of volume, but in terms of the number of brands and operators.
Regulation is becoming increasingly complex. Packaging legislation, pesticide requirements, herbicide regulations and other compliance obligations are constantly changing.
It is difficult for every small company to manage all of this independently.
At the moment, the market is very fragmented. Everyone has their own customer group, their own way of doing things and their own idea of what works. I think brands making the right decisions for the final consumer will strengthen their positions and continue to grow.
We have already seen examples in the United States showing that, when a brand gets the formula right, it can gain market share very quickly.
I also hope—and expect—that we will see quality improve.
The younger generation is demanding more transparency. And transparency naturally creates pressure around quality.
If you are using poor-quality tea, you may not want to talk too much about where it comes from. If customers increasingly expect to know the supply chain, businesses need to be able to answer those questions.
For us, this is something we can approach positively because we know our suppliers and can explain where our products come from.
I also see strong potential for tea as a non-alcoholic beverage.
Sparkling tea could become an important part of that market, although reaching the right consumer price point remains challenging.
Perhaps an even more immediate opportunity is high-quality homemade iced tea in restaurants, bars and even larger hospitality concepts.
With good loose-leaf tea, producing two litres of a genuinely good iced tea can be very economical.
And there are still markets that hardly exist today.
Tea for children is one example.
There are brands with one or two children's products, but I do not currently see a major European brand positioning itself entirely around high-quality, sugar-free fruit and herbal infusions for children.
That could become interesting, particularly as more countries discuss sugar taxation and consumers look for alternatives to sweetened beverages.
The wider opportunity is clear: tea can no longer be considered only a hot drink served in a cup. It is an ingredient, a beverage platform and, increasingly, an alternative to categories that consumers are actively trying to reduce.
The question for the industry is whether we are ready to communicate that potential properly.
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