From Handan glass to a Kunming tannery
Sandry Law, Head of Procurement for Teamotea, spends much of the year on the road between tea mountains, tasting labs, and partner workshops. His own kit needed to survive that rough travel. The leather deluxe edition grew out of a collaboration with a small tannery outside Kunming that still uses traditional vegetable tanning — mimosa and quebracho barks, no chrome, no shortcuts. The case, custom-fitted with foam padding for each glass piece, started as a one-off Sandry stitched for himself; fellow sommeliers kept asking where they could get one.
The glass inside is the same Handan borosilicate as the standard line — Liu Shenyang’s family bench, which Sandry checks on his regular Hebei visits for clarity, heat resistance, and that thin, fire-polished rim. Unlike the canvas version, this kit includes a thermos slot, on the theory that a working sommelier never travels without hot water already at temperature. Each piece is inspected under daylight-spectrum light, packed, and re-checked after a simulated drop test before it ships. It is the same kit Sandry carries on his own Handan and tea-region visits.