Saint Petersburg — 2026-07-20
MafiaTea today published its mid-summer sourcing report, detailing a ten-day buying trip through the Ān Xī (安溪) and Wǔ Yí (武夷) tea regions of Fujian. The result: 220 kilograms of tiě guān yīn (铁观音) purchased direct from three cooperatives, 80 kilograms of Wuyi rough material passed for further processing, and a wholesale price point that re-sets expectations for honest tieguanyin.
The trip was triggered by a simple observation — the tieguanyin market is broken. Auction-grade batches routinely trade at triple the cost an experienced buyer can negotiate by standing on the factory floor with a cupping set. MafiaTea decided to skip the middlemen and bring that floor price to its community.
In Anxi, the team secured two classic styles: a heavily-oxidised, medium-roast zhèng wèi (正味) from Xi Ping village, and a lighter, floral xiāo qīng (消青) from Gande. Both lots cleared a blind panel against the national geographical indication standard GB/T 19598-2006 — Product of geographical indication — Anxi Tieguanyin tea, ratified in 2006 and still the only enforceable quality benchmark for the category. The passed lots were priced at ¥400–¥620 per kilogram, roughly 40–55 percent below the median wholesale figure quoted by major e-commerce platforms for comparable grade in the same week.
“Tieguanyin pricing has become a carnival of inflated promises,” said Evgeniy Smoley, CEO of MafiaTea. “One farmer shows you a cupping bowl, another shows you a lab certificate, a third shows you a WhatsApp forward from a broker in Xiamen. We showed up with cash, a refractometer, and the GB/T 19598-2006 checklist. That’s the only backstory our tin needs.”
Not everything made the cut. A 60-kilogram lot of mǐ lán xiāng (蜜兰香) dancong was left on the table after three rounds of cupping revealed uneven roast and excessive stalk. A promising batch of dà hóng páo (大红袍) from the Banyan area stalled on pesticide residue documentation and will not be offered. The report itemises these rejections deliberately — MafiaTea publishes its misses as a signal to a market that prefers silence.
The Wuyi haul — semi-finished shuǐ xiān (水仙) and ròu guì (肉桂) — will age in the company’s Kunming warehouse until late autumn and is not part of the tieguanyin pre-order. However, buyers can track its progress via the tea.community sourcing thread, updated weekly throughout the resting phase.
Pre-order for the Anxi tieguanyin opens 1 August 2026 exclusively on shop.thetea.app. Each 100-gram tin will retail at ¥45, equivalent to a consumer-level price of £9 per cup based on the standard 4-gram gongfu dose — about one-third of the posted price for a specialty-coffee pour-over of comparable rarity. Detailed chemistry data and farmer-by-farmer cupping notes are available now on tea.school, the knowledge hub of the THE TEA constellation.
MafiaTea will host a live cupping and pricing AMA on tea.events on 28 July 2026 at 19:00 MSK, where buyers can blind-taste the two Anxi styles and interrogate the raw sourcing ledger.
Media contact
Evgeniy Smoley