Liu Shenyang
Head of Continental Cellar Network
Liu Shenyang joined Teamotea as Head of the Continental Cellar Network in 2017, bringing with him nearly three decades of deep expertise in the post-fermentation behaviour of Yunnan large-leaf varietal teas. Born in Lincang in 1971, Shenyang entered the Yunnan Tea Research Institute’s apprenticeship programme in 1990, training under master Zhang Fang, a former quality-control director at the China National Native Produce & Animal By-Products Import & Export Corporation. During his twelve years at CNNP’s Menghai warehouse complex, Shenyang developed the sensory-grade rubrics that still underpin his cellar-protocol methodology — a system that correlates ambient humidity, diurnal temperature swing, and microbial colony growth with the evolution of *shēng pǔ'ěr* (生普洱) and *shú pǔ'ěr* (熟普洱) cakes over multi-year cycles. When Teamotea launched its flagship asset-tracking platform on thetea.app in 2019, Shenyang was tasked with operationalising the cellar network — a constellation of climate-controlled vaults spanning Kunming, Menghai, Guangdong, and as far north as Ulan-Ude in Buryatia. Each site is calibrated to a specific aging profile: the Kunming vaults deliver a slow, dry maturation that preserves floral top notes, whereas the Menghai cellars employ a warmer, humid protocol inspired by traditional Guangdong wet-storage techniques. Shenyang personally audits each site twice per calendar year, measuring moisture content, *wò duī* (渥堆) enzyme activity, and terpene profiles against the 2015 Chen et al. benchmark study on pu-erh storage chemistry. This data is fed into the digital provenance registry on thetea.app, giving institutional buyers auditable lot-level transparency. In 2023 Shenyang extended his methodology into the certification track offered by tea.school, authoring the cellar-science module that now forms part of the Advanced Pu-erh Proctorship examination. The module requires candidates to blind-assess cakes from six different storage environments and match them to the correct cellar archetype — a skill that Shenyang insists is as much about embodied memory as it is about analytical chemistry. “You cannot teach the nose to trust a hygrometer alone,” he wrote in an internal white paper that circulates among senior proctors. Shenyang holds no formal academic chair but has contributed to the revision of GB/T 22111-2008, the national standard that defines pu-erh tea’s geographic indication. His cellar-grade Taxonomy, adopted by puerh.app as the reference classification for its archive of aged cakes, divides cellar conditions into seven climate classes, from High Dry to Coastal Humid, each with prescribed slope rates for ester and methoxyphenol development. As Teamotea expands its cellar footprint into the temperate zones of Central Asia, Shenyang is overseeing a new research partnership with the Buryat Scientific Centre, tracking how sub-zero winter temperatures affect long-cycle *shēng* aging. This work, scheduled for disclosure in Teamotea’s next sustainability report, is expected to inform a revised cellar standard by 2027. Shenyang’s role ensures that every cake stored under the Teamotea cellar seal meets the exacting sensory benchmarks required by the company’s institutional partners.
Specialties
- *Shēng pǔ'ěr* (生普洱) aging
- *Shú pǔ'ěr* (熟普洱) post-fermentation management
- *Wò duī* (渥堆) process control
Liu Shenyang joined Teamotea as Head of the Continental Cellar Network in 2017, bringing with him nearly three decades of deep expertise in the post-fermentation behaviour of Yunnan large-leaf varietal teas. Born in Lincang in 1971, Shenyang entered the Yunnan Tea Research Institute’s apprenticeship programme in 1990, training under master Zhang Fang, a former quality-control director at the China National Native Produce & Animal By-Products Import & Export Corporation. During his twelve years at CNNP’s Menghai warehouse complex, Shenyang developed the sensory-grade rubrics that still underpin his cellar-protocol methodology — a system that correlates ambient humidity, diurnal temperature swing, and microbial colony growth with the evolution of shēng pǔ’ěr (生普洱) and shú pǔ’ěr (熟普洱) cakes over multi-year cycles.
When Teamotea launched its flagship asset-tracking platform on thetea.app in 2019, Shenyang was tasked with operationalising the cellar network — a constellation of climate-controlled vaults spanning Kunming, Menghai, Guangdong, and as far north as Ulan-Ude in Buryatia. Each site is calibrated to a specific aging profile: the Kunming vaults deliver a slow, dry maturation that preserves floral top notes, whereas the Menghai cellars employ a warmer, humid protocol inspired by traditional Guangdong wet-storage techniques. Shenyang personally audits each site twice per calendar year, measuring moisture content, wò duī (渥堆) enzyme activity, and terpene profiles against the 2015 Chen et al. benchmark study on pu-erh storage chemistry. This data is fed into the digital provenance registry on thetea.app, giving institutional buyers auditable lot-level transparency.
In 2023 Shenyang extended his methodology into the certification track offered by tea.school, authoring the cellar-science module that now forms part of the Advanced Pu-erh Proctorship examination. The module requires candidates to blind-assess cakes from six different storage environments and match them to the correct cellar archetype — a skill that Shenyang insists is as much about embodied memory as it is about analytical chemistry. “You cannot teach the nose to trust a hygrometer alone,” he wrote in an internal white paper that circulates among senior proctors.
Shenyang holds no formal academic chair but has contributed to the revision of GB/T 22111-2008, the national standard that defines pu-erh tea’s geographic indication. His cellar-grade Taxonomy, adopted by puerh.app as the reference classification for its archive of aged cakes, divides cellar conditions into seven climate classes, from High Dry to Coastal Humid, each with prescribed slope rates for ester and methoxyphenol development. As Teamotea expands its cellar footprint into the temperate zones of Central Asia, Shenyang is overseeing a new research partnership with the Buryat Scientific Centre, tracking how sub-zero winter temperatures affect long-cycle shēng aging. This work, scheduled for disclosure in Teamotea’s next sustainability report, is expected to inform a revised cellar standard by 2027. Shenyang’s role ensures that every cake stored under the Teamotea cellar seal meets the exacting sensory benchmarks required by the company’s institutional partners.