Where I Buy my Tea
- Jennifer
- Jul 10, 2016
- 3 min read
One thing my friends always ask me is where I buy my tea. They wonder because it always has an excellent flavor, usually an exotic story, and it is all whole leaf, loose leaf tea. Tea of that quality is never available from any grocery store in the US. So, for people who are interested in buying some of the best quality tea in the world, here is a list of my suppliers and what kinds of tea they specialize in!
The tea that I am talking about is all from the tea bush, which is technically a tree when allowed to grow free without shaping. The botanical name is Camellia sinensis, a type of evergreen with large serrated green leaves. All true tea comes from this plant, and is processed differently into six classes of tea: white, green, oolong, black, dark - which includes Puerh, and yellow tea. All of these teas come from the Camellia sinensis plant and are caffeinated. All other herbal teas that come from the roots and leaves of hundreds of other species of plants, both caffeinated and not, are not true tea and are more properly called an herbal tisane.
One thing that people need to know is that most of the online or over the phone tea importers of the highest quality tend to specialize in tea from one area in the world. Even the importers who have tea from all the tea producing regions tend to have their highest quality and best selection of tea from 2 or 3 regions only. So, without further ado, here are my tea suppliers and the regions they focus on!
I buy almost all my Chinese tea from the Pheonix Collection. He carries the best quality Chinese tea I have found for the best price. He has a website, but you must place your order over the phone. He prefers being able to talk to people about their flavor preferences so that he can make personal recommendations for the type of tea people should buy. He has the best selection of top-shelf Puerh tea available outside of China, hands down. The smallest quantity he sells is the quarter pound, and he has a $50.00 minimum order fee. I don't mind these idiosyncrasies because he has the highest quality Chinese tea available for the best price, considering the quality, I have found anywhere.
to order over the phone: (415) 488-9017
My favorite importer of Japanese green tea is DensTea.com. They are Japanese and own at least a couple of tea plantations in Japan. They carry by far the best quality, freshest, Japanese green tea available in the US. For most of the tea they sell, they have a 2 oz. quantity and a 1 lb. quantity. Both are vacuum sealed to preserve optimal freshness, which is critical for the flavor quality of most Japanese green tea.
Den's Tea
My absolute favorite importer of Taiwanese oolongs is Brian at Shan Shui Teas. He imports only the highest quality oolongs from Taiwan. Most people will think his prices are out of this world, but you should keep in mind that these oolongs are intended to have the leaves re-steeped anywhere from four to eight times before you dispose of the leaves. It would almost be a crime to steep the leaves only once and then throw them away. If you keep this in mind, one 14 oz. cup of this tea is between $0.20 to $0.40. One cup of coffee from a coffee shop is between $2.00 to $6.00, and one glass of inexpensive wine bought at the liquor store is $1.50. So $112.00 for a 300g bag ends up costing less than a lot of other far lower quality luxuries.
Shan Shui Teas
My favorite source for Indian, Sri Lankan - otherwise known as Ceylon, and Napalese tea is Chado Tea. This particular vendor has tea from all over the world, but I would not buy tea from the regions listed above from this vendor, because his passion is teas from India and Sri Lanka primarily. I buy his Napalese teas because the tea is grown just over the border from Darjeeling in India. It can be just as high quality as an Indian Darjeeling at a fraction of the cost, because it is not technically a Darjeeling tea.
Chado Tea
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