Sharyn Johnston, Certified Tea Master™, was born in Canberra, Australia, and now lives in Geelong Victoria. Besides being an arm of the American Tea Masters Association for Australia and South East Asia, she owns a cafe called Tea Cartel. She follows the tea journey with passion and commitment.

Sharyn has lived and worked in many countries around the world and has traveled extensively over the past 20 years . Through her extensive travels, she experienced how tea was served in a myriad of ways, but always as a form of a welcoming beverage. She recognized how tea was consumed both in business and pleasure in different cultures, and found the enormous amount of varying flavors and tastes quite intriguing. This interest became addictive resulting in her creating the perfect tea house supplied direct from tea growers. The main focus of these special relationships gave her access to many single origin teas and specialty teas that are nurtured in small quantities and not commercially grown.

In 2011, Sharyn became a Certified Tea Master and Tea Cartel was launched. Tea Cartel houses a minimum of 170 teas direct from farms around the world. All teas are served in a traditional method and all blending is completed in-house using organic herbs.

Prior to this, Sharyn was one of the founding directors of Coffee Cartel in Australia with her son, Nathan, and in 2008, developed a specialty coffee/roastery house which has become one of Australia’s best. Nathan sources bean direct from farms around the world and has won medals for his roasting, but his secret passion in teas is oolongs. Together they have tasted and profiled hundreds of oolongs to give their coffee customers a new taste sensation beside coffee.

Sharyn credits the American Tea Masters Association for bringing tea to a new level in her life and has been selected to pass this information on by launching the Australian Tea Masters Association This will enable people from Australia and South East Asia to become Certified Tea Masters through the same education process and under the guidelines and direct affiliation of the American Tea Masters Association.

She will be traveling to tea farms in Sri Lanka and China this year in search of new teas and for the education. It is said one can never stop learning about tea with thousands of different tastes and flavors available. Yet they all come from the same Camellia sinensis plant, which is so unique.

Tea brings together so many people, in so many ways; it causes people to stop and taste and breathe. The words on the wall in Sharyn’s tea room says it all:

“The journey of a thousand cups begins with a single sip.”

Return to
Certification - Faculty