About Dark Monk
I'm a tea nerd.It's that simple.
No mysticism, no gatekeeping — just seriously good Chinese tea served by someone who got pulled in twenty years ago and still thinks the best cup is the one you actually want to drink.
Matt in the field
The short version
How a photographer found his way to the tea table.
My first cup of Taiwanese tea stopped me cold. It was layered, alive, and nothing like the tea I thought I knew.
That was 2006. I came into Chinese tea almost by accident — a job turned into a habit, the habit turned into an obsession, and the obsession eventually became Dark Monk Tea. My day job has been behind a camera; I've spent years as a commercial photographer. But tea kept taking up more room in my life, and eventually it stopped making sense not to share it.
I live in the mountains of western Colorado with my wife and our three kids. Around here, tea is not a fragile indoor hobby. It comes along on trails, lake days, cold mornings, and any excuse to sit still for a minute.
Steaming bowl — wide shot
What a tasting is like
Gongfu, minus the ceremony police.
I serve tea the traditional Gongfu way — small pot, multiple short steeps, and enough room for the leaves to change from pour to pour. It is precise, but it does not have to be pretentious.
01
Start with the leaf
Where the tea comes from, how it is made, and why timing, place, and processing can change everything in the cup.
02
Use the tools
The pot, the cups, the short steeps — what they actually do, what matters, and what is mostly theater.
03
Taste what changes
A few teas side by side, with room to notice what shifts from pour to pour. No right answers, no wrong opinions.
You don't need to know anything. You don't need to pretend you caught every tasting note. You just need an open mind, a little curiosity, and an hour at the table.
Come have a cup
Come to the table.
Sit down for a tasting, or take a bag home and start where you are. Either way, the first cup is the point.