In the wake of a devastating earthquake in March and a recent history involving a military coup, human rights abuses, restriction of liberties, and armed conflict, tea offers a ray of light that cuts into the darkness blanketing Myanmar.
Although, surrounded by countries with well-developed tea industries like India, China, Thailand, and Bangladesh, the nation that was called Burma until 1989 and is often still referred to by that name among locals, has not been similarly developed in tea.
Burma is said to mean “Land of Brahma,” who is the creator in the ancient Hindu pantheon of Gods and Goddesses that predates the current Burmese culture. It was this sense of creating something new that motivated Phyu Thwe, a British Citizen born and brought up in Burma, to build on the growth of wild tea plants growing on her family’s land in the village of Mogok, located around 200 km northeast of Mandalay (Myanmar’s second largest city).
Thwe’s path to becoming the proprietor of a social enterprise in tea has been a circuitous journey full of challenges. Indeed, Myanmar is not known for producing high quality teas—and neither was the region of Mogok. Rather, for more than a millennium, what made it special was the presence of precious stones embedded in the earth, which were mined both formally and informally with villagers simply digging for buried treasure. The prospect of riches brought people to the village from various places, transforming its parochial roots to a multicultural town.
The presence of rubies, sapphires, jade, spinals, and even diamonds has been recorded since ancient times. “People would come [to Mogok] hoping to get lucky,” says Thwe. It created a ‘gem-rush’ since Burma became independent from British rule in 1948.
That said, according to Thwe, “From the 1990s onwards, mining permits became increasingly difficult for locals to obtain, as the government began granting rights to the highest bidders, typically large companies. Since then, many residents have been left to rely on whatever leftovers the bigger companies provided, or simply on luck.”
Over time, Thwe says, excessive mining and the natural depletion of resources have made mining not only more difficult but also unsafe. Along with the advent of technology, internet access, and better infrastructure in the country, many of the younger generation left Mogok to pursue opportunities in the cities and abroad, leaving the town’s elders and remaining locals with virtually no other industry on which to depend than what lay beneath the land.
Nobody, it seems, except Thwe had any sense that another kind of treasure would emerge from the ground just as jewels had once been plentiful deep in the soil.
From the Boardroom to a Tea Garden: Thwe's Path to Tea Cultivation
Although Thwe’s family was a land-owning one, their aspirations for her involved education. So, she came to the UK to study in 2004.
“I was in London for a good part of my youth,” she says. There she studied accounting and began to climb corporate ladder upon graduation. In the process, she watched as her peers got married and started having families of their own.
“I was trying to survive and trying to climb a career ladder," she says. "I didn't have much time to think about what the future will look like."
By around thirty-four, she started to take stock of her life. By then, she was beginning to search for more meaning in her life right as tragedy struck her circle of friends.
At that point, Thwe had just bought a house and was about to enroll in a specialized taxation course with the intent of structuring the estates of wealthy clients as her colleagues had advised her that this would be a path to earn more money.
When it came time to get the house insured, there was a space for her to fill out the name of a beneficiary in the case of death. She couldn’t think of anyone. Then she thought of her mother and how she had helped so many people back home due to the land and (relative) wealth, which she had. While Thwe did not personally have very substantial means, she thought that the unused family land could be cultivated to benefit the villagers and decided that, as tea was already growing wild on it, if it could be properly grown, processed, and sold in a systematic way, the proceeds could go towards helping the villagers.
What Thwe had in mind was not philanthropy. Rather, it was true social entrepreneurship, meant to improve the livelihoods for the poor people of her village. “It's not like I'm handing out [money]. They are working for that money. I just need to sell this tea for them to be able to get paid."
Consequently, instead of studying tax, Thwe decided to study tea.
Until then, tea grown in Myanmar was sold unprocessed to China as mulch to produce Pu’er tea because the tea growing wild in Myanmar was mainly Camelia sinensis var. assamica, the same variety used for Chinese Pu’er tea, popularized in the Yunnan province. Indeed, with Chinese tea-drinkers ever on the lookout for innovations, Burmese Pu-er became something of a novelty in China, according to Thwe.
As one might imagine, providing the raw material for a product doesn’t exactly bring in much revenue, but locals didn’t have the vision or the drive that Thwe developed while in London, to produce high-quality artisan tea in Mogok.
How Tea Became Mogok's Recent Treasure
Mogok’s unique sub-tropical, semi-arid climatic conditions contrasting with most of Myanmar’s tropical jungle environment, make it more conducive to the kind of measured leaf development required in producing flavorful leaves. Indeed, crude concoctions of Mogok tea had revealed its aromatic character.
So, while continuing to work at her job, Thwe took courses in 2017/18 given by the UK Tea Academy, learning from people like acclaimed educator and author Jane Pettigrew. In 2019, taking her knowledge back to Mogok with her, Thwe began to train the locals and established a processing factory (something that had never been done in the Myanmar tea industry before). She promised locals a fair wage and sustained livelihood, and it attracted people thirsty for work after the drought of the precious stone industry.
In establishing the garden, and designing the nature of the tea to be grown, Thwe hired Beverly Wainright of Scottish Tea Factory as a consultant to guide her at each stage.
It didn’t take long for the factory to be completed and the garden set up for commercial cultivation. However, for Thwe, it was a huge investment—and then Covid-19 hit.
“I felt like I'm done with this because it's just so challenging, and 20 years of my savings was just gone,” Thwe recalls. However, her perspective on the situation changed when she was faced with the untimely passing of a colleague in the finance industry.
It led Thwe to take stock of her life, and she became doubly committed to the Mogok garden as a means of helping others. Still, her financial situation was dire.
But more untimely losses in the wake of Covid forced her to persevere as she realized how many people in Myanmar depended on the business, and she stopped worrying about the losses.
“It's reminding me that money doesn't mean anything in life unless you can help somebody,” she says as she searched to make sense of a time when so many were suffering around her.
Had she shuttered operations when frustration first hit, those who depended on her would have probably left Mogok in search of work in Mandalay or other big cities. Her determination in the face of adversity, while admirable in the sense of providing livelihoods for the workers, could not sustain itself in perpetuity if the enterprise continued to suffer losses. She had no idea that, at the time, she was poised for a turn-around, which occurred not so much when yield improved but rather when the garden started producing higher quality teas. These became in demand abroad.
The year after Covid hit, a military coup in Myanmar occurred in 2021, which spawned unrest beginning with a civil disobedience movement and mass arrests.
While the tea garden experienced some attrition during this period, most of the workers continued under these conditions because Mogok was not located close to the epicentre of unrest. Also, not only was Thwe by then providing them with much-needed wages, but she also had offered them generous health benefits for treatment of serious illnesses for up to six months.
As the conflict in Myanmar displaced millions, Mogok, being a small village with depleted resources, was largely insulated from the fighting. That said, last year, a bomb exploded on their property. As one might imagine, the incident impacted activity dramatically. “When the bombing happened, I paid them [workers] wages throughout the month that we [couldn't] work,” Thwe asserts. Afterwards, she had to accept that workers would only show up when they felt the conditions were safe to work. Hence, 2024 certainly couldn’t be considered a "normal" year.
Currently, a "good year" yields around 1 ton of tea per year. This too is only from 10 acres of land. Thwe has 80 acres on which she plans to expand over the next 10 years. She has a total capacity of 180 acres.
Evidenced by sporadic bombing, the conflict between the rebel group called the Peoples’ Defence Force and the Myanmar military has only intensified. So, it is no longer safe for Thwe to return herself. She must rely heavily on Ko Pe Tee – the Tea Master, who is responsible for supervising leaf picking and processing, and Naing Too – the manager, whose duties include general cleaning, paperwork, logistics, and communications.
They are also in charge of keeping meticulous records of what is plucked, including the types of teas that are plucked and the standard (they mostly pluck two leaves and a bud, but after rains, when growth is much faster and thicker, the pluck is more substantial). The record-keeping is essential to operating the business. Temperature and rainfall records are maintained daily as well.
Meanwhile, Thwe networks with companies in European countries such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, and the Czech Republic as well as in the USA to sell her tea wholesale. She says she doesn’t want to sell on a retail level as it may create problems for her back in Myanmar.
“I try my best not to publicize where I do business because basically there is no rule of law in Burma. Somebody claiming to be an authority may demand any amount from me. It’s happened before. For a fairly small shipment, once someone claiming to be a government official demanded USD $5,000 as a ‘tax.’"
Even shipping the tea has become complicated. While Mogok is only 200 km from Mandalay, the numerous checkpoints established by the military regime on one side and the rebels on the other, slow down the transport vehicles coming from Mogok. These cannot be large trucks either; they have to be unassuming residential vehicles with tea stored in the trunks and on the seats, for Mogok’s operations have to remain "as under the radar" as possible lest they become a target of "protection money." Mogok is not that formally governed, so one never knows when men with guns will just show up and demand money.
“Mogok has no heavy industry, so presence of trucks is suspicious and attracts the kind of interest we don’t want,” says Thwe. “We try and fly under the radar as much as possible.”
She adds, “I don’t do a lot of social media posts or online marketing because we just don’t know who is watching us.”
In 2025, even as the conflict in the country escalated, Thwe was readying for a better year than the one that had passed. Then a massive earthquake hit on the 28th of March 2025, with an intensity of 7.7 on the Richter scale. It was a colossal seismic event followed by an aftershock that was almost as severe. The twin tremors didn’t affect Mogok but disrupted the roads to Mandalay, which was situated at the epicentre of quake.
Thwe’s own family living in Mandalay had to flee their homes, and she has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for earthquake relief.
The roads are worse now due to the earthquake. So, what would in most countries take just five to six hours to reach Mandalay from Mogok takes many multiples of that. “Right now, it takes around a week to send tea to Mandalay,” says Thwe. It’s just another one of the challenges she and her colleagues face to bring Mogok tea to market.
The Season
Mokok’s harvest begins in late April or early May when, for six weeks they cultivate white tea. It is delicate, rare, and highly valued. The leaves are long and silver-green in color producing a light-yellow liquor. The flavor is concentrated in its aroma, which is floral and fruity—almost like the scent of a light perfume. There isn’t much liquor; indeed, the cup is smooth.
Interestingly, the flavor of Mogok white tea, which they market as “Free Spirit White,” is not dissimilar to high altitude assamica white teas available from India, which this writer has sampled in the past. This is a testament to the mineral rich soil, and elevation of the region that distinguishes Mogok from the rest of Myanmar, which is tropical jungle.
Following this period, two other varieties are harvested, one being normal black and green tea and the other being the rains tea, much of which is discarded due to lack of flavor. Because of the sporadic nature of the rain, the remaining tea isn’t packed in lots like those of other gardens. Rather, it is all blended at the end of the year to make use of as much rains tea as possible, and to give the tea consistency from year-to-year.
“We are actually selling 2024 tea, right now,” she says, though she says the sample she has sent me is 2025, so I can get a sense of the taste of a particular harvest. She says that year 2025 tea will be available after December when they complete the the blending process.
The black tea is long leaf, rolled tightly such that it appears almost coiled. Called “Black Ruby,” it is aptly named, yielding a reddish brew. Its aroma is more like a traditional tea, the tannins adding to the tea’s character. The tea is similar in profile to orthodox assamicas found in other tea-growing regions, but Black Ruby has a pleasant aftertaste that clings ever so slightly to the palate. In contrast to the white tea, which is lightly processed, the black tea seems heavily fired, giving it an almost roasted quality.
Mogok Garden’s tea is 100% organic. However, they can’t get certification because it is too dangerous for the authorities who grant the certificates to visit the estate and test the soil and plants. Instead, Thwe says that a German client tests their tea in their lab, and Thwe uses this report to assure other clients that they’re providing an organic tea. (Germans are quite particular about purchasing organic tea.) “It would be too expensive for us to test it ourselves,” she says.
Their green tea is called “Tiny Temple Green,” which has a light crisp flavor and bright finish. Rather than being too vegetal as many greens are, it has a slightly fruity aftertaste, which many find refreshing.
Tea tourism is naturally out of the question at Mogok due to the ongoing strife between the military government and the rebels.
However, if the situation normalizes, it is likely people will want to visit the estate as the tea has already won acclaim in the UK, winning Gold at the Leafies competition in 2022.
Thwe laments the situation, “It’s not even safe for me to go into the country – not only the region, but the country itself." She mentions people who have disappeared while visiting Myanmar or been put into prison for "challenging government policy."
Still, though she is stuck in the UK, Thwe keeps the business going. Mogok has three sections where tea can grow—and so far, Thwe has only cultivated a fraction of one. She intends to broaden this to all three sections and hopes the benefits to people of her social enterprise will only rise as she has great empathy for those whose liberty has been hijacked by people with guns. At least the workers of Mogok, for now, can work, have access to healthcare, and have peace of mind that some pension will come their way when they retire. For many in the war-torn country, this is a blessing.
Mogok means five trees, which refer to the five banyan trees with thick roots that ‘guard’ the entrance to the tea estate. For many, the tea produced at Mogok not only acts as a means of providing sustenance but also acts as protection for their lives and livelihoods. If the enterprise can continue into the future, Thwe’s concerns about leaving a legacy will have been allayed; no matter where she lives, she will have made an indelible mark on the region from where she has come.
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