There are hundreds of different brands of tea, and even if you have tried a number of them, it can still be intimidating to decide which brand to buy. That said, there are a few simple tips that can help you make a good decision.
Loose-leaf Tea vs. Tea Bags:
Whileit can be convenient to buy tea in your local supermarket, these stores typically only carry mainstream brands, and mostly tea bags. The best teas are usually only available in loose-leaf form. When you buy tea bags, you are paying for packaging, and when you buy mainstream brands in a store, you are paying in large part for the brand name and associated marketing, rather than the quality of the product. By contrast, when you buy loose-leaf tea, you are paying primarily for the quality of the tea itself. The result is a better tea at a more reasonable price.
Buying Tea From Local Stores:
Some people are lucky enough to live near a store that carries high-quality loose-leaf tea, but unfortunately, especially in the United States, where the tea culture is still developing, many people do not have this luxury. Also, some specialty tea shops are better than others, and some have a specific focus (such as British-style teas, or Chinese or Japanese teas). You can sometimes find loose-leaf tea at Asian markets, health food stores, and herb and spice stores.
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Buying Tea Online:
Buying anything online can be intimidating, especially when you have no prior experience from the company you wish to buy from. A few simple guidelines I use are:
Buy from tea companies focusing on the flavor and aroma of their tea, not companies selling tea as a weight-loss product.
The best tea companies provide information about how and from where they source their teas. Single-region and single-estate teas of named varieties are often (not always) higher-quality than blends, but companies selling high-quality blends will proudly advertise what regions and types of tea went into their blends.
Shop around to make sure you are getting a fair price for whatever you’re buying.
Read Online Reviews, Blogs, and Use Community Websites:
There is a rich community of blogs, forums, and interactive websites centering around tea. These websites can give you new ideas and guidance about new teas to try and companies to buy from. You can also use them to assess whether others have had good experiences with shipping and customer service when buying from a particular company.
Learn More About Tea:
Before buying tea, it can be helpful to learn a little bit of background information about different varieties of tea, and also about different tea-producing regions. The region in which a tea is grown affects its flavor, often just as much as the particular method of production used. Also, different tea companies and brands specialize in teas from different regions, cultures, and traditions. If you know more about tea, you will be able to buy from a company’s strength and areas of focus, rather than buying random teas added to their catalogue out of popular demand.
Sample Different Tea Brands and Decide For Yourself:
No amount of reading and research can substitute for actually tasting different teas. Different people have different tastes, and different tea companies and brands of tea cater to people with different preferences for flavor and aroma. In order to discover which brands are best for you and for those for whom you might be interested in buying tea as a gift, you need to begin tasting teas for yourself.
Alex Zorach is the creator of RateTea.net, an interactive website for tea ratings and reviews. This site has an extensive listing of different brands of tea, with a database of teas searchable by brand, style, and region, and a wealth of information on each tea company, each variety of tea, and each tea-producing region..
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