In 2014, while pursuing her PhD in flavour chemistry at the University of Nottingham, Natalie Chiu met her future husband, Charlie Winkworth-Smith.
Since their birthdays were just a day apart in March, they decided to celebrate together with a special dinner at a restaurant. During the elaborate 10-course meal, Chiu, who could not drink alcohol, felt she was missing out on the culinary experience that Winkworth-Smith was enjoying—a wonderful pairing of food and wine.
“There is so much attention put into food and wine pairing. A sommelier would come over and give you that wonderful experience, explaining how they curated the list, why it works with the food, where the wine is from and all that,” Chiu says. “Why should people who don’t want to or can’t drink alcohol feel like they have been left out?”
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This experience inspired the duo, who later became a couple, to create a non-alcoholic beverage designed for food pairing that would serve as a better alternative to typical options like juices and water.
In December 2019, they launched their sparkling tea brand, Saicho, in the UK. The brand now supplies over 60 celebrated restaurants worldwide, mainly in Britain and Hong Kong, including Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester and Tin Lung Heen.
Saicho’s regular lineup includes three main tea varieties: hojicha, a Japanese green tea; Darjeeling tea from India; and Chinese jasmine tea. This past October, it also introduced a limited edition brewed from tea leaves harvested from Taiwan’s Sixty Stone Mountain. Its beverages can be served standalone or creatively blended into mocktails and cocktails.
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The quest for the best tea
Winkworth-Smith and Chiu with Taiwan tea master Junjie Lin (Photo: Saicho)
On why they decided on tea as their business of choice: “At the start of the Saicho journey, we knew we wanted to create a delicious and complex drink. Ultimately, we realised that complexity doesn’t mean a lot of ingredients; it doesn’t mean jumbling our taste buds so we can’t distinguish between what’s what,” Chiu explains.
Despite growing up in different backgrounds, Chiu and Winkworth-Smith shared a mutual fondness for tea—she savoured Chinese tea during dim sum meals in Hong Kong, while he enjoyed British Builder’s tea in the UK.
“You can never get bored with tea,” Chiu says. “You can have it with or without caffeine. It could be floral tea, it could be dark, woody tea. It’s a great playground because there is a lot of history behind it and interesting flavour profiles from just one specific type of tea.”
The couple’s initial two-year exploration involved establishing connections with tea estates through countless emails and phone calls, experimenting with different brewing techniques and tasting teas made from an array of leaf types at home. Their ambition to curate a collection highlighting the nuances of key tea-growing regions—China, Japan and India—prolonged their journey further.
“Even within Darjeeling tea, when we started, there were 80 different tea gardens [at the tea estate we worked with in India]. And within that one garden, there were lots of different plots. We had to try every single plot of tea to make sure that we got what we wanted,” she recalls.
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Pairing tea with food
Chiu, a trained food scientist, takes pride in using tea leaves from a single origin, which offer a clean and crisp taste. “There is nothing we use to mask certain flavours or try to detract people from less-quality tea,” she says.
This approach stems from her desire for customers to appreciate the distinctive terroir, climate and history of the tea gardens from which the leaves originate. For instance, the brand’s latest limited drink features black tea with a honey-like aroma and flavour. This unique characteristic comes from an enzymatic reaction in the leaves when they are bitten by a green leafhopper called tea jassids at the tea garden on Sixty Stone Mountain in Taiwan.
Farmers work on a plot at Taiwan’s Sixty Stone Mountain (Photo: Saicho)
Black tea for Saicho’s Sixty Stone Mountain sparkling tea is grown in a tea garden managed by tea master Lin in Taiwan (Photo: Saicho)
While tea is typically enjoyed warm, every drink from Saicho is cold-brewed for 24 hours in a facility in the UK to create a well-balanced flavour profile free from excessive bitterness. Grape juice and citric acid are then added to enhance the taste. The finishing touch is to add effervescence to elevate the aroma and allow more flavours to shine.
The three regular sparkling teas—hojicha, jasmine and Darjeeling—pair well with different foods, just like wine. Chiu suggests pairing Darjeeling tea with roasted meats or vegetables for its muscatel and caramelised notes, while hojicha’s seaweed-like umami flavour makes it ideal for fish and Japanese cuisine. Its jasmine tea, the sweetest of the trio, pairs well with creamy desserts and even spicy dishes. “If you’re eating a stir-fried beef that is slightly spicy with Sichuan peppers, the peppers’ numbness makes the jasmine’s floralness really pop,” she adds.
Alcohol-free drinks aren’t subpar
Having made quite a name for itself in the dining scene, Chiu says an obstacle that strengthened the resilience of this British-Hong Kong brand as a company was the glass shortage that emerged following the Ukraine war in 2022. Many glass production facilities in Europe depended on affordable energy from Russia, which was disrupted due to the conflict. As the brand uses glass bottles to contain its products, the disruption in supply posed a serious challenge.
Chiu and her team had to leverage their connections and contact many suppliers persistently to secure the glass. “We are just a small player in the market; many others rely on glass as well. This is why establishing networks is very important—you never know who might lend you a hand when you need it,” she says.
Building Saicho alongside Winkworth-Smith has made the journey even more rewarding as they have grown as partners to now parents of two kids. Despite their contrasting personalities—Chiu is highly organised and sometimes gets frustrated by setbacks, while Winkworth-Smith brings creativity and calmness—they balance each other perfectly. “There is nothing closer than working with each other every day on a business that you talk [non-stop] about,” says Chiu.
As a growing startup, Chiu aspires to expand the Saicho team and make it a leading global non-alcoholic brand that offers unique, quality beverages. “It’s all about choice. People need to have a non-alcoholic choice that isn’t subpar to the alcoholic option,” she says.
“The mission [has] never [been] to replace wine, but offering an experience equal to wine or any alcohol.”
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Passion for food
We also ask Chiu a round of quickfire questions to learn more about her passion for dining.
What is your favourite food in Hong Kong?
Natalie Chiu (NC): Sweet pineapple bun.
Your favourite fine dining restaurant in Hong Kong?
NC: Amber, Hutong, L’Envol and 8 1/2 Otto E Mezzo Bombana.
Why did you want to become a food scientist?
NC: It was through a chemistry class at school that I discovered food science. The multifaceted nature of food science captivated me and it was a quick decision to pursue it as a degree.
Share one lesser-known fact about flavour chemistry.
NC: The smell of certain foods can hugely influence how we perceive taste. For example, the smell of ham alone will make you think something is saltier than it is. The same is true with the scent of vanilla, which is associated with sweetness.
How did growing up in Hong Kong inspire your interest in food?
NC: Hong Kong is one of the most vibrant places for food. You have cheap local eats as well as brilliant three Michelin-starred restaurants. Everybody working within those categories is passionate about what they do, which contributed to making Hong Kong a strong base for starting Saicho.
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