I’m so excited to share the incredible MJ of The Silk Tea Co with you! I’m currently sipping on the Zen & Tonic herbal blend as I write this. I first found MJ on Instagram and while I’m not usually a blended tea fan, I decided to give The Silk Tea Co a try because I heard so many raving reviews and also MJ is just a lovely person. Not only is she blending up tea, she’s supporting causes she cares about as well!

Check out this reel I made showing off her beautiful packaging!

1) A short intro about yourself/ The Silk Tea Co

Thank you for inviting me to this interview. So honored to have this opportunity to share a bit of my journey with you, Nazanin, I’m very grateful for all you do for our tea community.

I’m MJ Pham and I’m committed to leading a business for social good. I identify with being a maker — a maker of beauty, unforgettable moments, and transportive experiences. My current medium is tea. I founded The Silk Tea Co in the midst of the uncertainty and fear that came with the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City in April 2020. I want to empower all of our tea drinkers to travel the world with just a sip, while giving back to communities in need.

I create powerful and luxurious teas found nowhere else. Each blend is inspired by desire and ancient cultures. I’m so fortunate to have the joy of dreaming up all of our luxurious tea blends and the excitement of running a very small business. As a former U.S. diplomat and news reporter who’s won two national U.S. journalism awards, I’ve worked at the intersection of identity, culture, narrative, and history my entire life. As a first-generation Asian American, I’m honored to own this business as a woman of color.

2) When did you start drinking tea?

The role of tea in my life is ancestral. I grew up with tins of loose leaf tea from the local Asian grocery stores in Springfield, Massachusetts. My mom is a refugee from the Vietnam War and I was fortunate enough to be born in the US, thanks to the kindness of the Skruches, strangers who became family to us when they sponsored my mother to this country.
Tea brought my mom the comforts of her native Saigon. As a child, it was something that connected me to my mother tongue and one of my cultures. Today, it still connects the both of us to our roots. Growing up, trà sen, or lotus tea, as well as trà lài (jasmine tea), were always available in our kitchen. I witnessed how these teas marked the passage of time and solemnized important Vietnamese rituals, including weddings, the lunar new year, and paying respect to our ancestors.

Yet, it wasn’t until I was studying abroad and learning Mandarin at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China that my tea journey took a more serious turn. I discovered the beauty of the famous 龙井茶 (Longjing cha or dragon well tea) straight from local farms thanks to the community of professors and friends I encountered there. Every day I would bike around West Lake and go past a number of gorgeous tea fields, marveling at the beauty of it all. My classmates and I visited the tea museum and learned more about China’s incredible tea history. I fell in love. It was just before I turned 20 and I could finally appreciate the wonderful experience of steeping tea — the boiling of fresh water, the fragrant steam, the ritual itself. And I was able to finally taste a rich range of flavors that unfurled — a lovely floral bouquet in the tea, a certain grassiness, a slight astringency, and a sweetness I’d never before appreciated.

While I’ve inherited a respect for tea with my own culture as a Vietnamese-American, it was in China that I first took a deep-dive into tea.

3) What inspired you to start The Silk Tea Co?

My love of travel and desire to make others feel their best, wherever they are. Tea has made me feel so welcomed and seen in so many countries. Saudi Arabia comes to mind, especially. That’s where the inspiration for my Desert Rose blend comes from, and there’s a greater story behind it (two incredible women!).

I began The Silk Tea Co because I was craving teas that I couldn’t find online. I thought to myself, Well, if I’m going to make my own teas, I should find a way to share them. It’s been such an adventure since, and I’ve been so humbled and touched by the outpouring of love and support in our community. This is truly the greatest reward I’ve gained since starting this business — the warmth of new friendships, the incredible stories people have shared about our teas helping them and their loved ones through difficult times, surgeries, cancers, and more. There’s no greater honor than gaining the trust of each Silk Tea collector.

While I work in tech full time today, my passion is always centered around the table — and how we can come together. I’ve always been interested in food and I’ve spent a few years discussing gastrodiplomacy before. How are we connected? What do we have in common? What nourishes us? Tea connects each one of us; it’s rooted in the survival of humanity and civilizations. With The Silk Tea Co, it’s such a joy and honor for me to craft exquisite, luxurious blends that bring the ancient magic of tea alive with a modern twist.

4) What does your personal tea ritual look like?

There’s something freeing in the flow of tea, the pouring out of one’s self, the filling up of a cup, to replenish your own or to nourish another. I’m very experimental in how I brew. While I don’t adhere to any particularly strict brewing practice, I care deeply about the quality of the tea leaves and the blended ingredients — if I’m drinking a blended tea — and of course the temperature of the water. I like to say, once that’s all accounted for, brew however suits your life and flow. And I’m always experimenting with blends at home, too.

5) Do you have a current favorite tea?

Can I share a secret with you? Lately, I've been savoring a delicious, highly-prized aged oolong that I will share with everyone in the coming months as part of an upcoming product launch (!!). Every tea drinker has a certain palate, and mine loves highly oxidized teas....

Also, as the season changes, I've been drinking a lot of our own On the Rocks tea blend — made with sliced whole vanilla beans from Madagascar, a Rwandan black tea as well as two oolongs, one a dark pearl oolong from Taiwan and the other a jinxuan oolong cultivated in Thailand. I love how versatile it is, it's lovely hot, iced, and as a latte. Kenny Wu from @mr.yumtums just made scones with his On the Rocks tea blend, and I'm excited to craft more blends with food and culinary delights in mind.

6) Where do you find inspiration for your blends?

It all comes down to the feelings I feel in the places I go and have been. Sometimes these blends are inspired by a certain nostalgia, and sometimes they’re inspired by a certain idea I have about a place, an interplay of fragrance and flavor, and sometimes, even by a person. I’m inspired by so many places where I’ve lived and visited — Cambodia, Vietnam, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Morocco, and Italy to name a few. These have truly shaped the arc of my tea drinking practice and my tea making journey. With each blend, my aim is to curate a sense of wellbeing for our Silk Tea collectors, and to empower them to travel the world with just a sip while making a social impact with their purchase.

7) What are your hopes for the future of The Silk Tea Co?

To keep making teas with a positive social impact. Since our founding, we have donated 5% of profits to the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence Against Women. As a survivor of domestic violence and abuse in my former marriage, this is something that’s so close to my heart. It’s my personal mission to empower women everywhere. And most recently, in August 2021 after the crisis in Afghanistan and Haiti, The Silk Tea Co made a two-week call to fundraise for Save the Children and Mozaic DMV, a non-profit in the Washington, DC area resettling 2,500 Afghan refugees. We managed to raise $4,712 thanks to the generosity of our community as well as to our donors, including a third-party donor who helped us make this impact. I’m so grateful and inspired by everyone in our tea family.

8) One more thing to add…

Just as often as I'm drinking the teas I make, I'm always enjoying and in awe of the work of other teamakers and purveyors. There are so many I appreciate. I love offerings from Kiani Tea, TWG Tea, Chiki Tea and Naoki Matcha. I put in a massive order for White2tea recently and can't wait. And I hope to discover more brands to cheer on this year. We’re all in this together!