Welcome to Banna House, 1st Czech-Chinese project dedicated to Yunnan tea culture and European tea research.

What is Banna House?

Banna House is a shortened name for the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture (西双版纳), a famous puerh tea spot at the borders of China, Laos and Myanmar, which represents about 1/4 of the Czech Republic (± 20,000 km²). Our mission is to bring a small piece of tropical Xishuangbanna to Europe and raise awareness about the local tea culture.

Our Tea Chamber (Chashi 茶室) represents a small tropical piece of Xishuangbanna in the heart of Prague (Vyšehradská 11, Prague 2). Similarly to Yunnan family tea houses, we offer free tea degustations and a unique experience of drinking local teas since 2022. The tea is prepared by Shanshan Lin, a certified Jinuo tea master and local Xishuangbanna tea farmer. Her husband, Richard Grünwald, is a post-doctoral researcher and executive manager, who takes care of the administration and other business development.


Why to choose Banna House?

Our teas come directly from family relatives, classmates, and other friends who either harvest or process tea across twelve tea mountains in Xishuangbanna. Thanks to Shanshan, who comes from Jinuoshan village (基诺山) in Xishuangbanna, our teas do not come from third parties, which helps us offer better quality teas at reasonable prices. Currently, you can find more than 100 teas from Xishuangbanna, including some very special teas, which rarely leave the local market.

Unlike other tea suppliers, we are transparent about our tea farmers and producers, including the place of origin and declared quality. In addition, we provide regular updates about the tea taste profiles and share other helpful information based on direct communication with local tea farmers and producers in various dialects. Last but not least, we are conducting systemic tea research thanks to Shanshan's husband, Richard Grünwald, who is raising awareness about the European tea culture and differences among puer teas. For more information, follow our website www.bannahouse.cz/en.



What else do you have?

Apart from teas, we also have a large teaware collection with more than 500 unique products from hand-made teapots, gaiwans and cups to various bamboo tea tools, unique wooden tea seas, adorable tea pets and many other affordable tea equipment that will satisfy all your needs whenever you are a beginner or expert. We highly suggest to check out our Nixing and Jianshui teaware collection of all sizes, shapes and patterns from our tea potters, which are simply a piece of clay art.

Currently, about 30% of products in our collection come from Xishuangbanna. They are represented by the famous Dai tea pottery (daitao 傣陶) and other hand-made accessories from the local ethnic groups such as all-purpose textile bags, juicy black-tiger peanuts and various colourful embroidery. The rest of the products are predominantly oriented on improving your tea time and offering various valuable gifts and beautiful packing for your loved ones.
 

 
Do you organize public events?

In the last two years (2022-2024), we have participated in more than 30 tea-related events, festivals and charities in Europe. While we received relatively positive feedback about our work and connected with tea lovers from all over the world, we are constantly improving our services, building the foundation for systemic European tea research and searching for higher-quality products for available prices. However, such an approach requires an immense amount of time and effort, which currently leaves us with no space for organizing or taking part in any public events until the end of the year.

Nevertheless, you can visit us anytime in our Tea Chamber, where you can enjoy our teas and learn more about our teas. We are open from Monday to Sunday between 2-9 PM. Besides that, you can get more familiar with the tea terminology and geography of the local tea mountains or practice Chinese calligraphy. Alternatively, you can check out our new interactive educational features, which will be introduced on our website in Autumn 2024. These add-ons will be opened to the public for free and will facilitate a deeper understanding of the Xishuangbanna tea culture.

Feel free to contact us and tea with you ~

Shanshan Lin | Founder

Richard Grünwald | Co-founder