Tasting options for different processing methods?

Your best bet would be http://goldentipstea.com/ and other companies like it. They’re an India-sourced only tea shop, that focuses on single-estate Indian teas and includes the year and flush (where possible) of each tea.

It might take some hunting around the site and some few place searches so that you can match up green/black/white teas from the same estate, and they might not all end up being the same year/flush, but it’s a place to start.

Another shop would be http://what-cha.com/ which also sources single-estates, and conveniently lists the estate and year (where possible). More than just Indian-grown, but the drawback is there might not be as many teas from the same estates that are offered multiple tea types.

You also have to keep in mind that many tea-producing regions are tea type-specific. Especially China, Japan and Taiwan. Tea destined for two different processing types are rarely grown together, and often use carefully-chosen cultivars for their processing (an example would be tea destined to become matcha & gyokuro in Japan is not grown in the same area or the same way [or even using the same cultivar] as tea leaves destined to become sencha). It’s why I opened with sites that offer India estates, as well as countries outside of the three listed above. You’re more likely to find what you’re looking for there.

I came across these guys at World Tea Expo – ITCC. They do tastings and you can purchase sets that have a bunch of teas so you can explore different processing/regions/etc. Lots of info and learning potential, but not cheap as there’s a membership and you have to buy the teas if you want to do the tasting.

And their website is down as I link this. http://www.teacuppers.com

edit: facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Tea-Cuppers-Club/108554372563036

Very helpful, thanks, all!

Processing is the easiest to tell the difference, it’s pretty hard to confuse a green tea with a black tea, for example.

For a more advanced tasting, try from the same farm and same cultivar: different harvest of the year and different cultivation technique (shaded vs non shaded). It’s not difficult to achieve with a Japanese green tea supplier.

I don’t know if the processing technique is different or not but in the Haute Couture selection of Mariage Darjeelings, they offer 4 different types of tea from the same Ambootia estate. If you add the Spring, Summer, and Autumn harvests, along with the broken leaf line, it adds up to eight different teas from the same Ambootia estate. Maybe five from Happy Valley estate, three from the Chong Tong estate.

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The teas are fairly expensive.