high quality, great tasting tea for the best price?
i know this is a subjective question; however, there’ll most likely be a majority vote.
for those who have tried many different teas from different companies, which has high quality, great tasting tea for the best price? just base this solely on the tea, because that’s what ultimately matters.
so far, i’ve been looking at adagio, red blossom tea company, david’s tea, rishi, and samovar.
the places to buy tea is overwhelming. not to mention the fact, they all seem to think that they have “high quality” tea for a “reasonable” price.
I’m kind of a quality-per-price person too. Depends a lot on what type of tea you’re looking for though. I’d definitely recommend:
-Mountain Tea Co.: for Taiwanese oolongs. Their cheaper teas like the Jin Xuan, Four Seasons, and Black Pearl are really great for the price. They’ve also had some really good first-time buyer promotions and black friday sales in the past.
-Yunnan Sourcing: Even though they’re primarily a pu’erh vender, their greens, blacks, and oolongs are really good for the price as well. The .com site has a massive selection, and the .us has a smaller selection but cheaper shipping.
-Teavivre: Awesome variety of Chinese teas and nice quality with some of their teas still being pretty economical. Also has great customer service and they send samples with most orders.
Adagio has decent value and a nice website, but the teas that I’ve tried from them have all been “good” but not super amazing. I haven’t had much experience with the others you mentioned. :)
I love Chinese blacks, and some of my faves are from there. I recommend the Black Dragon Pearls, Bailin Gongfu, Yun Nan Dian Hong, Golden Monkey and Big Red Robe (the last being a roasted oolong). Those are the ones I consistently restock.
I agree. Teavivre is great. I just paid double for a flavored white from another company and I taste flavorings and no white tea! Teavivre’s Jasmine Silver Needle is amazing. I think I have about fifteen of their teas right now.
It really depends what type of tea you’re looking for, but my favorite by far is Yunnan Sourcing (chinese/yunnan province teas mostly), even with shipping on the high side their loose teas are usually top quality and dirt cheap, not to mention their massive selection of puer (in all price ranges).
Rishi isn’t too cheap but they are good. I mostly drink oolongs and adagio has some cheaper ones that are good. Stash tea has loose oolongs like organic tky that is cheap and good compared to others prices. I haven’t ordered from tea lux.ca yet but after seeing the prices on their oolongs that will be my next purchase. I hope they are good :)
I like Tealux for straight teas, I’ve ordered mostly oolongs and blacks. I find their flavored teas and tisanes hit or miss for me. Their prices are reasonable, and they offer sample size, 25g, 50g for most of their teas. It’s nice to be able to buy small quantities.
Tealux is also having a 25% off all teas until 02Aug enter code SUMMER25
I really like enjoyingtea.com. They give you a lot for your money, and everything I’ve tried is very nice quality.
I would second the recommendations for Teavivre and Mountain tea, especially Teavivre. I wasn’t that impressed with enjoyingtea.com; their prices were excellent but the quality wasn’t nearly as high as Teavivre, Mountain, or Adagio. Not that their teas were bad, just not top shelf (If you are a drinker, think Johnny Walker Red rather than Black). If you want “high quality for the best price” they probably aren’t the best choice.
You didn’t say whether you preferred straight tea or flavored. Most of the recommendations so far seem to be from people who enjoy straight tea. ALso, taste is personal. I’ve discovered that I just can’t enjoy a Yunnan, even of the highest quality, as much as I do an oolong or keemun. For that reason, you need to take all the recommendations with a grain of salt.
The way I shop for quality at a good price is to use the sort function on the various teas in Steepster. I will look at a particular type of tea and see which company names come up in the early pages (highest scores). This is what led me to Teavivre: If you select only black teas in the tea page, 4 of the top 24 black teas are from Teavivre. When you do this sort, Butiki and Verdant also have many entries, but if you go to their prices are quite a bit higher than Teavivre. Since I am price-sensitive, I leaned toward Teavivre. You can do this with any tea type. It takes a bit of effort, but for me the shopping is part of the fun.
You can also do this search within a particular company: As an example Teavivre has four different Keemun teas, reading the reviews helped me to select the one that I think is best suited to my taste and budget. Particularly interesting was a couple who drank all four keemuns side-by-side and wrote detailed tasting notes (one of them liked the cheapest the best!).
I assumed enjoyingtea’s prices were just too good to be very high quality. That’s good tealux has good straight teas as that is what I prefer. I was a bit wary of stash tea since they are a pretty mainstream bag company but the loose oolongs I got from them were cheap and good.
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