Aged-tea curriculum update — adding continental storage component

Saint Petersburg — 2026-02-18

The tea academy (tea.academy), the credentialing body within the Teamotea constellation, has today ratified a revision to the Level II Aged Tea Specialist examination. From the spring 2026 sitting onward, candidates will be required to complete a comparative tasting component covering cakes aged under dry-continental conditions, in addition to the existing humid-subtropical and Kunming-dry reference profiles.

The revision was approved by the academy’s standards committee on 12 February 2026 following an eighteen-month review period. It is the third substantive change to the Level II syllabus since the credential was first issued in 2022, and the first to formally incorporate non-Chinese storage environments as a required tasting reference. The underlying tea material — shēng pǔ’ěr (生普洱) and shóu pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) of Yunnan origin — remains unchanged. The revision concerns post-production storage only.

The new component is grounded in field data collected by the Teamotea storage research programme between 2021 and 2025. Over that period, paired reference cakes from a 2018 spring Menghai pressing were stored under three controlled environments: a Guangdong humid-subtropical room (annual mean 24°C, 72% relative humidity), a Kunming dry-storage room (annual mean 16°C, 58% relative humidity), and a continental room in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia (annual mean 4°C, 41% relative humidity). Quarterly tasting panels documented divergence in cup profile, with the Buryatia samples developing a distinctive thinned-but-aromatic character — high-pitched camphor notes, reduced huí gān (回甘), and accelerated tannin softening relative to the Kunming reference. Detailed sample-pair results are published at puerh.app/storage-trials.

The academy has elected to add this third reference profile to the Level II examination because, as of January 2026, an estimated 14% of registered Level II candidates store working inventory in continental climates — principally in Buryatia, Mongolia, inland Kazakhstan, and the Russian Far East. Until now, those candidates have been examined exclusively against humid-subtropical and Kunming-dry benchmarks, which the standards committee determined no longer adequately reflects the storage realities of the practising cohort.

“The credential must describe what aged tea is, not what it ought to be in a single climate,” said Evgeniy Smoley, Chief Executive Officer of Teamotea and co-author of the academy’s syllabus. “Continental storage is no longer marginal. We have five years of paired-cake data showing it produces a coherent, identifiable cup — different from Guangdong, different from Kunming, but coherent on its own terms. A Level II holder should be able to identify it blind, describe its mechanism, and counsel a client on its trade-offs. That is now examinable.”

Under the revised structure, the Level II Aged Tea Specialist examination will consist of four components, totalling four hours of seated assessment:

Component A — written theory (60 minutes, 40 questions). Covers production, microbial succession during wò duī (渥堆) fermentation, the GB/T 22111-2008 geographical-indication standard for pǔ’ěr tea, and storage chemistry. Unchanged from the 2024 syllabus.

Component B — blind identification by region and rough vintage (45 minutes, six cups). Candidates identify production area within Yunnan and assign each sample to one of four vintage bands. Unchanged.

Component C — comparative storage tasting (75 minutes, nine cups, three flights of three). New component. Each flight presents the same base cake aged under the three reference environments. Candidates must correctly assign each cup to its storage profile, describe the diagnostic markers, and write a 200-word storage-counsel note for a hypothetical client scenario.

Component D — oral defence (60 minutes). Candidates present a working storage log for a cake of their own provenance to a panel of two examiners. Unchanged in form, but the marking rubric has been updated to require explicit consideration of climate-class trade-offs.

The pass mark for the examination remains 70%, with a minimum 60% required in each individual component. Historical pass rates for Level II since 2022 stand at 41% on first sitting and 67% across all sittings — figures the academy expects to fall modestly during the 2026 and 2027 transition period as candidates adjust to the expanded scope.

In the 2025 examination year, 312 candidates sat the Level II examination across nine sitting centres. Regional distribution was as follows: Kunming and wider Yunnan, 38%; Guangdong and Hong Kong, 21%; Saint Petersburg, 14%; Berlin and central Europe, 9%; Ulan-Ude and Buryatia, 7%; Almaty, 4%; remaining centres, 7%. The Saint Petersburg and Ulan-Ude centres recorded the lowest first-sitting pass rates (33% and 29% respectively), a disparity the standards committee attributes in part to the prior absence of a continental reference in the examined material.

To support candidates preparing under the revised syllabus, three measures will be in place from March 2026:

First, a free updated study handbook (revision 4.1) will be distributed to all registered Level II candidates and is available for download via tea.academy/handbook. The handbook adds a 24-page chapter on continental storage chemistry and includes the full set of 2021–2025 reference-cake tasting notes.

Second, a calibration tasting flight will be made available for purchase through shop.thetea.app, comprising 8-gram samples of the three reference storage profiles drawn from the 2018 Menghai pressing used in the academy’s research programme. The flight is supplied at cost and is not required for sitting the examination.

Third, the academy’s partner network, including the Ulan-Ude reference room operated under the tea.travel programme, will host four open calibration sessions during spring 2026. Dates and registration are listed at tea.events and tea.community.

The revision does not affect Level I (Foundation) or Level III (Tea Master) credentials. Existing Level II credential holders retain their certification without action; the revised syllabus applies to candidates sitting the examination on or after 8 April 2026. The next sitting window runs 8–22 April 2026.

The academy will publish a public consultation summary, including dissenting standards-committee opinions and the full storage-trial dataset, on 1 March 2026. Comments from credential holders and industry partners may be submitted via the academy’s standards portal until 15 March 2026.

About the tea academy. The tea academy is the credentialing body of the Teamotea constellation, issuing industry-recognised certifications at Foundation, Specialist, Master, and Educator levels for tea professionals working with Chinese tea. It operates independently of the constellation’s instructional arm (tea.school) and its commercial channels (shop.thetea.app, shop.puerh.app). All credentials are publicly verifiable at tea.academy/credentials.

Media contact

Dmitry Sologubov

press@tea.academy