Old Tea Seller is a project developed from the passions and experience of two decades. The name Old Tea Seller, Baisao in Japanese, is the chosen name of a late 17th century individual who dedicated his life to the service of tea to his fellow Kyoto-city inhabitants. The Old Tea Seller went through many transitions in his life only to eventually renounce all accepted social structures and devote his final years exclusively to tea.
The current Old Tea Seller’s name is Aaron Armstrong. OTS is located in Seattle, though Mr. Armstrong can often be found at his family home in Chiba, Japan or in one of the many tea-producing regions of Japan. He has spent the past two decades studying the intricacies of the Japanese and Chinese tea ceremonies and working in a variety of tea related industries, from labor including tea plant cultivation, hybridization and tea leaf harvesting, oxidation, firing, and finish processing to distribution on the global wholesale market and retail sales and marketing. He has a had a wonderful adventure that has left him with a thorough understanding of the culture and economics of tea.
