Good news for Berlin’s more ambitious tea drinkers: specialty P & T (Paper & Tea) tea shop is expanding from the city’s Charlottenburg neighborhood (pictured below), where they launched the company in 2012, with a new concept store just a subway ride away in Mitte ( shown above).
Keeping in line with their systematic way of displaying product, founder Jens de Gruyter worked again with designer Fabian von Ferrari on the shop’s focal point, a 23 foot-long shelf where teas (white, green, yellow, oolong, black, pu-erh and scented and blended teas) are organized by their origin and rate of oxidation (how quickly the tea leaves degrade after they’re exposed to oxygen).
Like a good wine shop, each tea is accompanied by notes about its aroma and flavor, along with beautiful accessories for brewing, serving, storing, and even writing about tea (that would be the ‘paper’ part). Even if you don’t sign up for one of the shop’s incredible-sound seminars, no trip to P & T is complete without a hot cup prepared by an astute teaist gong fu style, the traditional Chinese method that literally translates to “making tea with effort.” Fortunately, none will be required of you.
