Our Founder, Alexandra Verhoosel, has been buying and sourcing teas in China for many years. It started out of interest to find new and exciting teas, but soon lead to the formation of her company Tea & Things in Belgium. Together with her son, Hans Verhoosel, they have been specialising in directly importing a small range of teas carefully selected from small local farmers based on ethical, environmental and quality standards, with the local help of tea aficionado Wang Jiannong.

Hans together with his partner, Amy Gallagher, has also been running a speciality Belgian café called La Place Verte (www.laplaceverte.co.uk) in York, UK since 2006, and soon began to buy these specially sourced teas in their coffee house, having already been disappointed with the range of loose leaf tea available in the UK. The teas became so popular that they soon added them into their shop, which was formally selling just Belgian chocolates. It was from here that the brand Lu Lin was born. Lu Lin means Green Forest in Chinese, not only reflecting a clear link with La Place Verte (the Green Place), but also emphasising the natural and healthy aspects of the products.

Lu Lin is a passionate, ethical company who wishes to promote Chinese teas, while supporting local Chinese farmers and cutting out the middle man in the process to supply you with high quality tea at an affordable price. We manage the whole process right the way through from sourcing and quality checking to packing, and then shipping directly from China to the U.K. in small batches to ensure high quality control.

Lu Lin now consists of an enthusiastic, small but multi-national team of people dedicated to finding and promoting the best teas in China and to increase their knowledge of Chinese teas everyday. Lu Lin aims to make Chinese tea a more accessible drink for everyone and so they not only sell classic Chinese teas and tea ware for those familiar with Chinese tea but also Chinese Tea Exploration Boxes so that everyone is able to learn more about and love Chinese tea as much as we do.