What is Warm Leaves?

Warm Leaves is a monthly loose leaf tea subscription. Every month, you get the pleasure of tasting the four best teas from a different country, together with filters, simple-to-follow brewing instruction, and interesting description card on the teas. In a whole year, you will experience the finest loose leaves from 12 major tea producing countries, completing an around-the-globe tea tasting journey! Warm leaves deliver teas worldwide, free of charge. So treat yourself or someone you love to experience a whole world of loose leaf tea. No hassle, only enjoyment.

What is Loose Leaf Tea?

When we say loose leaf tea, we are talking about leaves from the plant Camellia Sinensis. All the different types of tea: Green, black, white, oolong, and puer are made from the same leaves, just treated differently.

Once harvested, tea leaves start a natural fermentation, called oxidation. This process is stopped by heating the leaves through fire or steam. After heating, the best whole leaves are picked out, saved, and made into loose leaf tea. These leaves have superior flavour and unrivaled aroma, preserved from the natural tea leaves. They also contain most of the healthy natural antioxidants.

With Warm Leaves we offer only these premium quality loose leaves, picked freshly from tea gardens. Taking quality a step further, we focus only on pure loose leaves, which means that we don’t blend tea leaves with flowers, fruits, or herbs. We keep the original flavour.

In contrast, tea bags are filled with ‘dust and fannings’ created during the treatment process, which represents the lowest grade tea. Because they are from broken leaves, they lose most of the natural oil and smell, and taste bitterer than whole leaves.

Explore a Whole World of Tea

Much like fine wine, tea carries different flavour and aroma depending on when it’s picked, how it’s treated after plucking, and most importantly, where it is grown. Majority of the teas today are grown in Southeast Asia, Middle East, South America, and Southeast Africa. Since the environments are so different in these regions, the teas they produce carry completely distinct characteristics. And it is these unique characteristics that we are exploring with Warm Leaves.

We have picked the following 12 major tea producing countries from these regions to source our tea from. Every month, you get to taste four of the finest teas from one country, and in a year, you will have experienced a whole world of loose leaves!

Is it Simple to Enjoy Loose Leaf Tea?

The answer is a big YES. All you need is tea, a cup, and boiling water. To ensure a hassle-free experience, we include filters and simple-to-follow brewing instructions in our monthly tea box. And wherever you are, we deliver the box to your door, free of charge.

Health Benefits of Drinking Loose Leaf Tea

More Antioxidants

All teas from the Camellia plant are rich in Polyphenols and Catechins, which are 2 major detoxifying and disease-fighting antioxidants. Because loose leaf tea is made of whole leaves, they keep more of these natural antioxidants.

According to researches and studies, these antioxidants can help prevent ovarian and breast cancers, reduce chance for heart disease and stroke, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, encourage weight loss, and strengthen your immune system. More related to everyday life is that tea can help to soothe stress and keep you relaxed, because tea reduce levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone.

Less Caffeine

The amount of caffeine in tea varies widely from one tea to another, and depends on how the tea is brewed. However, in most cases, tea has much less caffeine than coffee. A typical cup of coffee contains 80-135 mg of caffeine, while a cup of tea contains 15-70 mg of caffeine. It is advised that 200-300 mg of caffeine daily intake is safe to general public. This means that you can enjoy more tea than coffee per day.

Who are we & Why we create Warm Leaves?

We are Henrik and Effy, an international couple, who actually had our first date in a traditional Chinese tea house in Shanghai.

Henrik Saetre – From Bergen, Norway – Devoted Tea Enthusiast

I remember my first encounter with high quality loose leaf tea. Seven years ago my whole bachelor class travelled to a tea farm located several hours from Shanghai. Driving in we saw the tea plants hugging the mountain sides, and we got to see how tea was grown, produced, and readied for consumption. There I bought my first pouches of pure green tea, and have never looked back since.

Effy Yu – From Shanghai, China – Converted Tea Lover

I used to be a coffee drinker, relying on it to give me energy for work. However, as much as I loved coffee, the insomnia it gave me always held me back from drinking it in the afternoon or more than one cup a day. There’s no such concerns after I started drinking tea, as I can have a strong black tea for energy boost in the morning, and enjoy a mild white tea to ensure a good night sleep.

During our 4 years together in Shanghai, we were spoiled by an excellent variety of fine Chinese teas. 2 years ago, we moved to Dublin, and have since missed high quality loose leaf tea badly. After trying the tea blends, herbal teas, and tea bags that are available here, we were left unsatisfied. Finding good quality loose leaf tea turned out to be quite a challenge. We needed to either order online in big portions which leaves the tea go stale, or purchase in well-hidden boutiques that charges unreasonably high prices.

And that’s how we came up with the idea of Warm Leaves, a monthly subscription service that allows you to taste a large variety of teas from around the world, in consumable portions so that you will always have the premium loose leaves, at its freshest.

We Need Your Help

During the past year, we’ve built relationships with tea suppliers around the world, setup logistical chains, and laid down the groundwork needed for a worldwide service. We have reached agreements with tea suppliers from Japan, Taiwan, Nepal, India and China. We are currently in negotiation with suppliers from all the other countries. Your support will help us reach the minimum order quantity of these tea suppliers, and achieve our goal to deliver you the best teas from these 12 countries, and even go beyond.

For those who live outside of US, have you ever felt annoyed when shopping online and finding that delivery is only within US? Or that it delivers worldwide, but charges a crazy shipping cost? We live outside of US and we know your pain. That’s why we have worked hard and creatively with shipping services to solve this problem. Warm Leaves aim to delivered the teas to your door free of shipping charge, no matter where you live. This is not an easy thing to offer, but with your support, we will get the quantity needed to make it come true.

Project Timeline

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which Tea will I get for which month?

A: You will get Japanese tea in February, Taiwanese tea in March, and Nepalese tea in April. The order of the other 9 countries will be revealed after the campaign ends.

Q: If I join later, which tea will I get then? Do I start with Japan? Or with the country of that month? 

A: Warm Leaves is a journey, and new subscribers join the country we are currently doing, so we are all sharing the experience. No spoilers

Q: What if I want to pause or cancel the subscription?

A: You can pause or cancel it anytime you want. Just let us know 1 month earlier. We will pause your subscription and you can restart later; or if you want, we can cancel your subscription and refund payment for the outstanding months.

Q: What if I receive a damaged box of tea?

A: We don’t expect it to happen. But if it does, let us know and we are happy to send you a replacement box of tea.

Q: What if I really like the teas from a country? How can I get more of that?

A: We are so happy you like our tea and want more! We are working now with our partners to offer individual purchases, so you can get more of the special teas you love. As backers, we will keep you in the loop on the process.

Q: What is the plan for the 2nd year? Can I choose which country I want the teas from?

A: We are definitely working to expand our country list. In the 2nd year, we will have teas from new countries, plus different teas from the countries of this year. Please let us know which countries you want to taste the teas from, and we will work to facilitate that for the 2nd year.

Source: ICNW