I was in Seoul recently, and since I had some free time, my boyfriend and I decided to visit the Beautiful Tea Museum! I saw “we decided” but really, I am the tea addict here and he was happy to accompany me there.

I heard about Teastory Beautiful Tea Museum from a friend on Instagram! I do love tea and museums so this interested me very much. Unfortunately, this isn’t really a musuem – there’s about one wall with a few tea objects (some have beautiful kintsugi), but that’s about it. There was an AR exhibition going on then, but the description didn’t seem very relevant to tea and we didn’t have the app so we couldn’t experience it.

Instead, this is really a very beautiful teahouse! The teahouse sits in what should be a courtyard, but it’s closed up and protected from the elements. The teashop serves mostly tea, including not just Korean tea but also teas from other countries, as well as a limited selection of snacks. There was also a seasonal menu when we visited, but that’s more towards mixed drinks (think tea lattes) than straight teas.

The tea I tried was the Hwangcha, which is described as a “Korean traditional tea” that has been oxidised (or “intention of oxidation” in the translation) and thus has a “gold brown color” with a “soft and sweet taste”. I gotta say, the description is spot on. The hwangcha was a gorgeous tea, with a yellow tea liquor that seemed golden n the sunlight. In terms of taste, it was sweet, with soft floral note that was supported by a slight vegetal note. It actually reminded me of some of the Renegade teas, which is a surprise because those teas are from Georgia. In the second and third steeps, I did get a new herbal note, but that went away by the fourth steep.

By the way, I really appreciated that they gave me a kettle of water with the tea. It made it easy to make myself more servings of tea without having to worry about the water cooling!

Apart from the teahouse and the museum section, Teastory also has a small shop with teas, tisanes, and teaware available for sale. Some of the teawares look quite nice and the teas and tisanes are what you can also find in the teahouse section.

This was a really beautiful place that is worth a visit. It’s located in Insadong, a popular tourist area, so you could easily make this a stop where you sit and catch your breath for a bit.

P.s. I’m so proud of myself for getting this post written in a timely manner BUT I still have one post (which is vaguely tea-related) that I want to share which I’ve not written – fingers crossed I write it soon!