Beginner to tea, where to start ?

Thank you ! Your reply was very informative.

Also, take a look through these discussion boards. There is a wealth of information here. You can search by topic to help narrow down the choices.

Personally, I almost never resteep black teas. I find they usually don’t resteep well and most of the flavour is lost. And, I’m really iffy about resteeping herbals too for the same reason, though some mixes (like mint herbals) I find resteep surprisingly well. Other than that, I resteep everything else.

I don’t think there is chocolate in Santa’s secret but it is really good! I also love mint and steep a tablespoon of Peppermint Amour for the whole time I drink it. Good stuff! Herbals to avoid if you are not into caffeine are mate and guayusa. Some stores class them as herbals but they’re highly caffeinated. Enjoy!

I just checked the page for Santa’s Secret and you’re right; my bad.

Is there something wrong with David’s Tea ?

No. I think we just assumed that you were familiar with them and were looking to try some other companies.

DT is great, but yeah, assuming you’d want to try other companies + DT sounds out of your way. Plus, Luxberry does free shipping within Canada.

I love my “local” David’s Tea, good customer service, people have knowledge about their stuff and they do not try to upsell like Teavana (which are currently opening a store in the same mall). If David’s tea is a honest company, I’ll keep on buying there.

I’ve heard good stories about Tealish, might order from them soon, thanks for your input !

Yikes, Camellia Sinensis is not affordable… 50$ for Gyokuro.

Some of their teas are a little expensive that’s true, but they are generally well regarded.

I haven’t tried this company before but they have an interesting selection of greens and seem to be a little more affordable.

http://www.amourdesthes.com/shopping/the-vert-c-21_25.html

Den’s tea has a great starter kit for those interested in Japanese greens.
http://www.denstea.com/bnew-to-dens-teab-c-377.html
http://www.o-cha.com/home.php is another site you might consider.

Whoa that was quite helpful ! Thanks a million !

Enthusiastic thumbs up to Tao Tea Leaf and Den’s Tea as great sources for affordable, good quality green tea when you’re starting out. As for Whispering Pines, if you try it and find it lacking at first, I recommend adding more leaf than normal, and/or cold steeping (stick in a container overnight in the fridge, strain). I thought I wasn’t impressed with WP at first, that the teas lacked flavor, but it turns out some are really delicious, they just need to be amped up more than I’m used to.

As for caffeine, it’s still sort of murky which teas contain the most caffeine—common wisdom used to say black tea, but now it looks like it might actually be the less processed sorts like whites. And there’s a lot of myths about caffeine and tea (a common one is that if you rinse your tea leaves for a few seconds and dump that water out and then steep your tea like normal it’ll remove most of the caffeine; this isn’t true). Pretty much anything with proper tea leaves in it is going to have SOME caffeine unless it’s been decaffeinated. This is kinda dense but an interesting take on “ack, tea and caffeine”: http://verdanttea.com/whats-the-real-deal-with-caffeine-in-tea/

Resteeping…it varies by person, I’d just resteep on a whim whenever you finish a new tea the first time to see. You can always dump it if you don’t like it after a sip. Personally, I rarely find flavored “basic” black teas resteep-worthy, but there can be exceptions if the base is full leaf/tippy/etc. and/or the flavorings involved are resteep-friendly (hibiscus is, often mint is). Green tea and oolongs don’t steep in water as hot usually, and also steep for less time than black teas often, so they resteep well (some people even think it’s the second through fourth steeps of greens or oolongs where the flavor is the best). A lot of times I’ll drink a tea hot and throw the leftover leaves in a container in the fridge overnight, and more often than not I’m pleasantly surprised to find it’s pretty good cold the next day. Not always but sometimes (I especially love greens this way).

Some online stores I’ve had really good customer service experiences with, where I feel confident if something was way off/wrong with something they sent and I told them they’d do what they could to resolve things: Verdant, Butiki, New Mexico Tea Company, Teavivre (they do free shipping worldwide for orders over $30 and have sample sizes of just about everything too), and Mandala.

Want to order Teavivre’s Organic Superfine Dragon Well so bad but I just made a crazy order at David’s Tea and a good one at Butiki… Wanna try ‘em all it’s crazy.