Source to Sip

Beca Tea boasts traditional tea for the contemporary palate

- Katelyn Tan

"We are neither a tea bar nor a trend," smiles PC Koh, the fourth generation of one of the oldest tea purveyor families in Malaysia. "We are tea people.

For 92 years, the Koh family has been in the tea business; PC's great grandfather was a tea farmer from a tea village in Fujian, China, the only trade the village knew. "As such, his son, who was my grandfather, was also educated in tea production, and was tasked to carry the tea to nearby towns to sell or trade," explains PC.

Eventually, the family emigrated to Malaysia, and PC's grandfather continued to do what he knew best-blending and selling teas, and together, the family grew the business.

"Five generations later, tea remains at the heart of the family.

"We eat, breathe, and live for tea," chuckles PC. "Some of my friends used to joke that I had tea running in my veins." It was a family secret how the first generation Koh processed teas, a skill he passed down to the younger generation in the family.

Many of PC's earliest memories revolve around tea, including morning sessions he would share with his father tasting teas. "My father was typically an impatient man, but when it came to tea and inducting me into the trade, he was surprisingly forgiving," he reminisces.

As a child, PC and his extended family used to live on a one-acre piece of land in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where family life and tea-production commingled. At the time, teas from China arrived semi-finished and required roasting at a constant temperature.

"I have vivid memories of stoking the embers of the charcoal fires that were kept alive twenty-fourseven to roast tea," he says.

Fifth-generation Joshua Ong, PC's nephew, who sits with us in Beca Tea alongside PC's wife, Wong Rin Rin, also shares similar tea-centric experiences. "There was always a large, communal pot of tea in the house, filled with oolong or tieguanyin, that everyone would drink from," he smiles.