New Delhi, July 20 -- On Instagram, I stumbled upon the @theteadrunk, and was pleasantly surprised to find another teahead in Bengaluru. What's more, he was hosting a gong fu tea session. Gong fu is a Chinese style of tea brewing, and is well suited for speciality teas, but rather uncommon in India.

So last Saturday, I made my way to Sai Karthik (The Tea Drunk) and his wife Maitreyee Bezbaroa's home for an evening of tea, gong fu style. "I started exploring tea about six years ago and organically moved towards eastern brewing practices because they offered much greater precision in brewing tea," he says. It took him to a tea master in Malaysia, who introduced him to the specifics of gong fu brewing and trained him.

Early this year, Kart...