Tea, Travel and the Printed Leaf: Olaf Tarmas on Building t-Magazin
Introduction
I have collaborated with Olaf Tarmas and t-Magazin since 2024, supporting the magazine through editorial work, business development, partnerships and its international expansion.
After many conversations and projects together, we finally had the chance to sit down in Hamburg this summer and speak in a more structured way about the magazine, his journey as a tea and travel journalist, and what it takes to keep an independent tea publication alive.
For me, the conversation also connects to something fundamental: tea education. If we want people to understand quality, origin and the cultures behind tea, we need more than products — we need good stories, trusted information and independent voices that make people curious enough to learn more.
We spoke about the origins of t-Magazin, the realities of running a niche print publication, sponsorship and independence, print versus digital, the role of community, and how Olaf sees the future of tea journalism and education.
1. Before t-Magazin, where did tea and journalism first meet for you?
Olaf :
The trip to Taiwan in 2011 was really important. I was there on a completely different journalistic assignment, unrelated to tea, with a friend who was also already interested in tea. We were doing research for other stories, but during our breaks we would often visit tea houses.
That was almost a revelation for me. It was the first time I felt I was discovering a real tea culture, and I realised that I had never experienced anything comparable in Europe at that time.
I came back from Taiwan wanting to open a tea shop specialising in Taiwanese teas. But then life continued, and I went back to my work as a journalist.
Over the years, tea gradually became more present in my journalism. I started writing about it for culinary and travel magazines. One important assignment was a story I pitched for Lufthansa Magazine about tea in Laos. A photographer friend and I accompanied tea buyers on a sourcing trip to Phongsaly. We came back with a big story and wonderful photography — and then, almost immediately, the COVID lockdown started. Lufthansa stopped flying, there was no longer a need for the magazine in the same way, and the story was essentially lost.
During lockdown, I again had this energy around tea and started developing a concept for a tea shop. I even discussed it with a wholesaler in Bremen. At some point, the woman I was speaking with said: “It is a very nice idea, but you already have a very nice profession as a journalist. Don't you want to keep that?”
That was the moment when I realised: maybe I can keep being a journalist and still devote myself to tea. Why not create a tea magazine?
Journalistically, it also feels like a natural progression. I started as a film journalist, writing film criticism and interviewing actors and directors. Then I became more of a travel and science journalist. Now, I suppose, I have become a tea journalist.
2. When you created t-Magazin, did you genuinely believe it could become what it is today?
Olaf: I don't think I really had expectations. It developed very organically.
I remember the first issue had around 52 pages and a cover story about the new tea culture. When we finished it, my feeling was: Wow, we put everything we had into this issue. How can we possibly do a second one with the same quality?
I remember saying that, and Bertram told me: “No, I think it was quite okay. We can replicate it.”
That was really our approach. We thought from one issue to the next rather than following some big master plan.
At some point, I realised that the business model we were building was quite unusual. We developed this community of sponsors around the magazine, almost like a grassroots network. From the beginning, some people were extremely engaged and genuinely wanted the project to exist. Thomas Grömer from Aiya, for example, supported us from very early on.
A lot of it has always been about relationships with small and medium-sized tea companies.
And perhaps I was also a little blauäugig — naïve in a positive sense. I didn't really understand how difficult it would become. I simply thought: We will find a way.
If I had known beforehand how complicated it would be, I might never have started. You need passion, determination and a lot of stamina. Financially, it was very hard in the beginning, and it remains precarious at times. But I had already spent many years as a freelance journalist, so perhaps I was accustomed to that kind of uncertainty.
3. What does running a tea magazine actually look like behind the pages?
Olaf: First of all, it is wonderful. For me, it really is a dream job and a passion job.
I am a journalist at heart. I love researching, learning new things, meeting people and experiencing stories while researching them. I love working with writers, photographers and, of course, with our art director Katja, who created the design, the layout and the overall visual identity of the magazine.
That is the very enjoyable part.
But then there is the sheer amount of work involved. You work every day. There are deadlines constantly. Every issue is like an enormous puzzle made up of thousands of tiny pieces. Even something as simple as a caption does not just exist — somebody has to research it, write it, check it and put it in the right place.
Then there are the financially nerve-racking moments: Will there be enough money? Will everybody pay on time so that I can pay everybody else on time?
I am still a single entrepreneur, and I carry essentially 100% of the financial risk. That responsibility can weigh heavily.
We are proud of having reached five years, ten German editions and five international editions with such a small team. But the road towards a truly sustainable business is still long. I would say perhaps we are halfway there.
So when we talk about the future of tea, we are also constantly thinking about the future of t-Magazin itself: how do we become more sustainable and how do we reach more readers?
4. Who pays for independent tea journalism?
Olaf:
Our business model essentially has three revenue streams: magazine sales, traditional advertising and sponsorship.
Selling more magazines is obviously very important, particularly for the international edition. At the moment, one of our main challenges is increasing readership, and we are seeing encouraging developments in places such as the United States and Canada.
Sponsorship is extremely important, but it is also the most delicate part because it immediately raises the question of editorial independence.
From the beginning, we have tried to make one thing very clear: we are extremely grateful when a company wants to support t-Magazin because they believe that tea culture deserves this kind of publication. In many ways, it is a collective effort.
But you cannot buy editorial space.
Financial support does not mean that you automatically receive editorial coverage proportional to the amount of money you contribute.
Of course, when we research new stories, we know many of our sponsors very well, and sometimes stories emerge through those relationships. But we also work with companies that do not sponsor us.
Maintaining that independence is fundamental because, from the beginning, I have always thought that our biggest sponsors are actually our readers. They are the people to whom we are ultimately accountable. They should be able to expect independent articles and professional journalism from us.
5. How important has the community around t-Magazin been to its survival and growth?
Olaf: It is fundamental.
The interesting thing is that companies almost never contact us themselves and say, “We would like to sponsor you.” We usually have to approach them.
And very often the companies that respond are small or medium-sized businesses that are still managed directly by their founders. It becomes a very personal relationship. We meet, we have tea together, and they realise that this is not some strange publishing project coming from outside the tea industry.
I am also one of these slightly crazy tea people.
By now, of course, t-Magazin has built a reputation and companies can see what the magazine looks like and what we stand for. But one of the biggest challenges is explaining that sponsorship is a long-term partnership, rather than something you provide once to help launch a project.
It is part of the business model.
Without that third revenue stream, I don't think producing a magazine like this would be possible today. There is a reason why so many print publications are disappearing.
I think there are two major reasons t-Magazin continues to exist. First, we developed this sponsorship model. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, we are deeply connected to a community. We don't have an anonymous readership somewhere out there; we are part of the same community as our readers.
For me, tea festivals are some of the happiest moments because I can actually meet that community — consumers, producers and tea people coming from Taiwan, China, Japan and many other places.
Tea is a very small niche, but it is a global niche, and that fascinates me. I studied cultural anthropology and have always been interested in cultures, so being part of this international tea community is something that really speaks to me.
What has disappointed me more is the limited interest shown by some of the very large tea companies. The tea market is divided between a huge commodity market and a much smaller quality-oriented market. There are exceptions, of course, but many of the largest companies simply do not seem particularly interested in what is happening inside this smaller speciality community.
Perhaps the numbers are simply not large enough for them.
But the quality sector exists, and I think it will continue to grow. Artisan tea cannot necessarily be scaled to supermarket volumes, and perhaps it shouldn't be.
6. In an increasingly digital world, why continue to believe in paper?
Olaf: First of all, paper is simply where we come from.
We have worked as journalists for 20 or 25 years for traditional print publications, including magazines such as National Geographic. We knew how to produce a high-quality paper magazine, and that experience allowed us to reach a certain level of quality from the first issue.
But from the beginning, I also felt there was a natural affinity between printed paper and crafted tea leaves.
There is even a wonderful linguistic connection in German journalism. The person responsible for putting together a newspaper is sometimes called a Blattmacher — literally, a “leaf maker”. And, in a completely different sense, a tea producer is also someone who makes leaves.
I like that connection very much.
Print is slower. Perhaps it is old-fashioned or retro, but that is also its strength.
Slow living, slow reading.
You are not simply staring at a screen and scrolling. You can sit down with the magazine, take your time, come back to it and eventually put it on your bookshelf.
We deliberately use relatively thick, high-quality paper and strong binding because we don't want the magazine to feel disposable. Ideally, readers don't throw it away. They collect the issues.
In that sense, every edition becomes almost like a small book and, over time, the collection becomes a growing library of tea knowledge and tea stories.
The challenge, of course, is that if people want a physical copy, they have to pay for it, while digitally people have become accustomed to receiving enormous amounts of content for free.
Digital media therefore has an important role for us, but we are still working out the right balance. On Instagram, for example, we try to offer small insights and teasers that make people curious about the full story without reproducing the entire magazine online.
That balance is more delicate than it might appear.
7. What changed when t-Magazin became international?
Olaf: From the beginning, I felt that creating an international edition could not simply mean translating the German magazine into English. If we wanted to create something genuinely international, we also needed to broaden the people and places represented in the magazine.
So only part of the German edition is translated. Increasingly, the international edition contains original reporting and articles of its own.
For our Yunnan issue, for example, I wrote two completely different cover stories based on two different journeys through Yunnan with different people.
It really became a different magazine.
And the exchange works in both directions. Sometimes we publish a strong international story — such as our story about the tea community in Texas — and later realise that it deserves to be translated and published for our German readers too.
One thing I have learned is how extraordinarily different national tea markets are.
The German-language edition is doing very well, while with the international edition we still need to attract more readers.
Germany, Austria and Switzerland have a relatively established relationship with quality tea. Other markets work very differently. The UK, for example, has enormous tea consumption in terms of volume, but the speciality scene is comparatively fragmented. France has a very interesting culinary approach to tea, particularly Japanese tea. The Netherlands has its own scene, and Belgium — particularly Brussels — is developing as well.
So there isn't really one European tea market. There are many different markets developing at different speeds.
At the moment, I find the United States particularly interesting. There is a very active tea community there, and we intend to include more American perspectives in future international editions.
8. You are not only a tea journalist but also a travel journalist. What can you understand about tea only by going there?
Olaf:
For me, tea journalism actually felt like a very natural extension of travel journalism.
As a travel journalist, one of the biggest challenges is identifying the story and then finding a way to finance the research. Often there are several parties involved — the publication itself, destination marketing organisations, travel companies and others — and you have to navigate all of these relationships while maintaining the journalistic story.
In that sense, travel journalism was almost a training ground for what I later had to do with t-Magazin. And tea does not feel restrictive to me at all.
If I arrive in a new city, one of the first places I naturally want to visit is a tea place anyway.
Tea can actually give you a route into a country or culture.
When you arrive somewhere completely new, there are endless possible ways of trying to understand that place. Tea gives you structure. Through it, you begin meeting people and discovering agriculture, food, craftsmanship, history and contemporary culture.
Eventually, if you understand something about a country's tea culture, you often understand quite a lot about other aspects of that culture as well — particularly today, when tea increasingly intersects with modern food, design and urban culture.
9. Do you see t-Magazin primarily as journalism, or has it also become a form of tea education?
Olaf:
I think we occupy an interesting space somewhere in between.
There are institutions specifically designed for tea education, such as the UK Tea Academy. You take courses, study, and potentially receive certifications. We cooperate with them, but that is not what t-Magazin itself does.
We are closer to the entertainment side of education.
You don't necessarily sit down with the magazine thinking, Now I have to learn. Instead, you learn almost automatically because you enjoy reading the stories.
The knowledge is there, but it comes through people, places and narratives.
That puts us in an interesting space between formal tea education and simply drinking tea.
We are currently exploring ways of working more closely with organisations such as the UK Tea Academy — perhaps by making t-Magazin available as supplementary reading within courses or bringing selected educational material into the magazine.
Ideally, these approaches complement one another.
Because ultimately, if you become serious about tea, some learning is unavoidable. You have to sit down, compare teas, understand some theory and develop your palate. But not every educational experience has to feel like school.
10. What will tea education — and tea media — need to become next?
Olaf:
The short answer is: I don't know.
I have never really been someone who thinks in terms of “Where will this be in five or ten years?”
There is already a huge amount of information about tea available through social media and digital platforms. Some of it is reliable, and some of it isn't. But there are also organisations such as the UK Tea Academy, ESTA and publications such as t-Magazin or Eighty Degrees providing serious information.
I hope that the ecosystem simply continues to evolve.
I don't necessarily expect tea to suddenly experience one enormous boom comparable to what we have seen with matcha. Tea itself is slow.
It takes time. And perhaps that means it will never be about a sudden boom. I hope the niche becomes larger and tea becomes more widespread and popular, while still retaining some of that character.
For t-Magazin specifically, I would like us to connect with more readers and more companies, particularly in the United States and Canada.
But another very interesting direction for tea education is building stronger connections with China, Taiwan and Japan. There are so many culinary and cultural concepts surrounding tea in those countries that, even with all the knowledge available to us in Europe, can still become lost in translation.
That is actually behind one of our new projects, provisionally called Lost in Translation. The idea is to identify culturally specific concepts around tea and explore how they can meaningfully be translated and understood in another cultural context.
For that, we want to cooperate more closely with tea companies and academic institutions in China, Taiwan and Japan. It would probably become something closer to a book than a conventional issue of t-Magazin.
And perhaps that is also part of the future: not simply giving people more information about tea, but helping them understand the cultural ideas behind it.
Conclusion
What stayed with me most from this conversation is how much tea education depends on people who are willing to document, question and translate the tea world for others.
t-Magazin is not only a publication about tea. It is also part of the infrastructure that helps a small but growing community understand producers, origins, culture, quality and the changes happening across the industry.
And perhaps that is also the value of independent tea journalism today: not to make tea faster or simpler, but to give people the context to appreciate it more deeply.
Like tea itself, this kind of work takes time — and that may be exactly why it matters.
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