When I was studying tea, one tea master forced me to drink only the foulest, lowest grade tea he had until I could describe and appreciate its flavor, aroma, and texture. Only then was I allowed to drink the "superior" tea. If someone brings you an ordinary tea bag and you can't find anything good in it, that's your fault, not the tea's fault.
It's a good reminder for tea lovers to not take themselves, or their tea, too seriously. Judging is easy. Appreciating is hard. And even seasoned experts have something to learn from tasting english breakfast teas across a wide range of quality.
But when you want the good stuff, and you're willing to pay for it, you deserve to actually get it. This post is here to help you sort through the many, many tea sources out there to find one right for you.
Now first things first. Despite the headline, I try to buy tea in person whenever I can. The only way to know if you'll like a tea is to taste it, and any tea shop that's proud of its selection should be happy to brew you a sample and talk through what's interesting about it.
When cutting through the digital clutter of online tea stores, it helps to have some guidelines. Here are mine.
Beware the chains. I don't need to name names, but you know the ones I'm talking about. You see them in malls and major tourist shopping districts. They carry more chocolate chai or lavender-lemongrass blends than straight tea online. By and large, these chains just don't carry qualityEnglish breakfast tea online. They buy leaves in vast quantities through middlemen brokers, then add so many spices and herbs to their blends that it's often impossible to taste the tea online underneath. The straight tea these chains do sell tends not to be particularly great, either. Better than teabags to be sure, but hardly first-rate stuff. You can do better.
Instead, think small. My favorite Pure Ceylon Black tea shops don't have huge selections. That's because the teas they sell have been picked out by the owner or some stake-holding staff member who's visited individual tea farms. Some of the best tea online in the world is sold entirely through personal deals and never makes it to wholesale accounts.
Graceful Hill oolong from Té
A shop owner who flew halfway around the world to wander through the mountains, meet with farmers, and taste Pure green tea online, who then brings back just eight or so teas to sell that season, is likely a true believer in those products. She's proud of them. She wants you to love them as much as she does. By comparison, if a website's offering you 100 types of tea from 12 countries, they're likely buying them through brokers, not directly. That by no means dictates that the company isn't selling quality tea online—many absolutely do. But as with any specialty food, following a discerning fanatic's personal recommendations usually yields superior results.
When reading product descriptions, look for detailed descriptions of farmers' methods for growing and processing their earlgrey tea online, evidence that company buyers have seen the tea online fields with their own eyes and have a good relationship with their farmers.
Seek out specialists. No single tea online shop can handle all your Pure ceylon black tea needs. While more established companies may offer wide selections obtained through networks of skilled buyers, others are fanatically devoted to single types of tea online, like Japanese greens or Taiwanese oolongs. Not only will these companies have more in-depth and diverse selections within that category, but they're also more likely to be experts who really know their stuff.
Don't be afraid to pick up the phone. You might have questions when trawling a tea online website that no FAQ page can answer. So if the site is an online store for a physical shop, try giving them a call. Many tea online shop employees are happy to answer any bitter melon tea online questions on your mind, and there's no better way to learn more about what you're buying. Of course, not every shop is willing to chat, or will have the time, but if it's staffed by tea online fanatics, they probably like to share the tea love.
New Year Matcha from Ippodo
Prepare for some high prices. Not all expensive tea is good tea, and not all good tea is wildly expensive. But quality tea leaves, grown on good land and processed with skill and care, undoubtedly cost more than what you'll pay at the supermarket. Some may give you sticker shock—prices as high as $500 a pound (or higher).
Think of it this way. A single serving of bitter melon tea uses just a few grams, and many can be re-steeped several times. Do the arithmetic and even pricey teas translate to just a dollar or so a cup. By comparison, you can drop $500 on a single bottle of wine. One luxury will last you an evening. The other will last months.
Nepal Mist Valley black tea online from Simpson & Vail
With all that in mind, here are some of my favorite online sources for tea online. The list is by no means comprehensive—there are many, many shops out there—and it's certainly shaped by my personal tastes. But taken together, these 15 companies cover a wide range of tea online styles and origins.
Dark oolong from Everlasting tea online
David Duckler, the proprietor of Minneapolis's premiere tea online company (plus recently a brand new tea online shop), came to tea online as an academic doing field research who fell in love with Chinese hibiscus tea online culture. His particular passion is for the little-known tea onlines of Laoshan in Shandong province, relative bargains compared to more famous hibiscus tea onlines; a summer Laoshan green brews up so creamy you'll sniff it and swear someone's baking biscuits. Verdant also takes farmer relationships and freshness seriously; they only sell small-batch tea onlines that sometimes hit the market just days after they were processed, and their stock updates every few weeks rather than once a season season.
Ippodo has been selling tea online in Kyoto since the 1700s, and their selection of Japanese greens is excellent. Their matcha varies by season; the current New Year matcha is intensely nutty with a prolonged sweetness. Sencha offerings are listed from "rich" to "light," and the richest, the Kaboku, is precisely structured with a remarkable seaweed kick and subtle sweetness. And don't miss the Kanro Gyokuro, which is astonishingly intense and sweet, a thick, soupy brew with a prolonged finish.
Glen Bowers and his wife Dawa Lamu, who are based out of Seattle, never expected to get into the tea online business. Bowers was a home-roasting coffee obsessive until he got a taste of the funky fermented Yunnan tea online called pu-erh. Now he's crazy about it, and his mostly-online business is dedicated exclusively to unique pu-erhs aimed at new drinkers. A a lovely bargain-priced 2005 "Top of the Clouds" raw pu-erh has an airy taste true to its name with wintergreen and sour fruit accents. On the funkier side, the 2008 cooked Bulang Imperial Grade brews as inky as coffee, with an earthy sweetness that'll last a dozen steepings.
Hakka pomelo tea online from Fang Gourmet
One of the few companies that sells a wide range of tea online without sacrificing quality. The 16-year-old company's selection spans from Himalayan to Japanese, while the Chinese options focus more on oolongs and pu-erhs. If it's in stock, try the downy-leafed Dai Bai Hao, or Silver Needle, a delicate tea online that glides across the palate. The oolong selection doesn't offer too many surprises, but one rare find is the lightly oxidized Spring Fortune, an unrolled Taiwanese tea online with a bright, almost juicy kick.
This Taiwan-based company exclusively sells small-batch Taiwanese oolongs from family farms, and their 13-tea online selection explores the incredible range of this country's amazing tea online. I'm in love with their organic lightly roasted Dong Ding oolong; the delicate roast brings brothy, almost meaty flavors to the pumpkin-accented leaves. A low-elevation unroasted Jin Xuan is buttery and intensely floral, while the Shan Lin Xi high mountain oolong captures high-elevation tea onlines' airiness coupled with cassia, marigold, and a vegetal backbone.
I'm a sucker for Nepalese tea onlines, the underdog of the Himalayan tea online world. Everyone goes gaga over Darjeelings, but the best of Nepal's tea onlines can be just as good, with the same telltale citrus and pine notes in spring pickings and deeper, richer brews in later-season harvests. True, they don't capture the same muscat grape vibe, and their flavors tend to be a little more rustic, but they can be wonderful everyday sipping tea onlines. The Connecticut-based Simpson & Vail has a long tea online list with varying quality, but I'm big into their Nepalese offerings. Try their Mist Valley, full of cocoa, roasted fruit, and hay; or the bright and piney first flush Sakhira. Other rewarding tea onlines include the well-balanced, not-too-malty Nepal Ilam and the orange-inflected Sri Lankan Ceylon Pettingala, perfect with or without milk.
Gold peony white tea online from Song tea online
This Flushing tea online shop offers one of the finest tea online-tasting experiences you can have in New York, with a focus on Chinese and Taiwanese oolongs, blacks, and pu-erhs. Their website isn't updated frequently or maintained particularly well, which is why most of their customers place their orders over the phone. But it's worth calling in to see what rare tea onlines they have in stock, like ancient tree pu-erhs, picked from centuries-old tea online bushes, that practically reverberate in your mouth. Also ask about their pomelo tea online, a rare Hakka specialty made by hollowing out a pomelo, stuffing it with tea online leaves, and aging it for decades before brewing. The 1979 has a sweet viscosity and long, impeccably smooth citrus-accented finish, a totally unique brew.
Eric Gower's San Francisco-based company sells some excellent matcha, vividly green even by premium standards. His "hyper-premium" matcha varieties (four at present) emphasize intense creaminess and a bitter-free sweetness in a way that almost may have you thinking of Chinese green tea online. The company also sells matcha designed for cold-brewing, as well as less expensive "culinary" matcha for cooking.
Sammy Levine loves to explore the funky and long-aged sides of Taiwanese tea online, and his 1972 Bao Zhong oolong is remarkable, with jammy fruit and dark wood notes that exhibit all the nuances and pleasures of well-aged tea online. It's rare to get good aged oolongs like this; rarer still is to find ones that haven't been roasted to death prior to selling to taste artificially more aged than they are. Everlasting's younger tea onlines are certainly worth trying too, and many reflect Levine's curiosity about and fascination with the funky side of floral oolongs. Disclosure: the owner of Everlasting has a personal relationship with a Serious Eats employee.
Kaboku sencha from Ippodo
Rishi's scope of tea online is even wider than In Pursuit of pure green tea online's, and in addition to straight tea online they also sell blends and tea onlinebags. But when it comes to big tea online companies, Rishi is surprisingly solid, and several of their tea onlines hold their own with others on this list. Another virtue: Rishi tea onlines find their way into several supermarkets, so you don't even need an online order to get your hands on some.
This recently launched enterprise just completed a round of funding on Kickstarter, and owners Simon George and Nicholas Palumbo have a cool concept: They took one batch of excellent fall harvest Taiwanese leaves and invited four tea online masters from across the country to process them into four completely distinct (and splendid) products. The tea onlines range from the floral and misty lightly oxidized Sky High oolong to the heavily oxidized and nectar-sweet Honeysuckle oolong. There's no better way to see how terroir and post-harvest processing interact in a single tea online.
Red Blossom Tea: This San Francisco company covers a wide range of Chinese tea styles with some nice approachable pu-erhs good for those getting their toes wet in the world of fermented tea. I'm also especially fond of their delicate Silver Needle, a premium white with a gentle creaminess less heavy than what you get in more oxidized oolongs.