Judging tea shops

If you let us know what kind of tea you are interested in, we can recommend some trusted vendors.

Worse than teabags? I doubt it. However keep in mind that lots of vendors sell good tea without listing all the estate/flush/grade stuff…and some not so good teas can list everything down to the zodiac sign of the picker.

If yo want people to recommend local tea shops you should start by saying where you are from. I can recommend good shops in the USA but other people will be able to recommend shops in France or Britain for example.

I think a spammer is working in if the original poster doesn’t answer.

if a tea shop does not list that info there may be several reasons:
They focus on blends and don’t think to include it.
The tea is a blend. Ie a generic blend from several estates or from several pickings on an estate. This may be especially true in Indian subcontinent teas where many tea estates are controlled by larger corporations that may sell tea from several estates, or for a tea that is purchased from one of the major wholesalers and relabelled under different brands. Some tea shops have unflavoured blends where they blend several types of teas or teas from different tea estates in order to create a certain consistent taste profile so that when you purchase it repeatedly you will have the same flavour each time you buy it.

It will probably be a lower grade of tea but as you stated you wanted a tea for milk sometimes broken leaf tea will brew darker and stronger in the first steep than full leaf tea. The broken leaf tea may have a tendency to more bitterness and usually will not steep as many times as a full leaf tea, but unless it is fanning ( looks like dust) it will be a higher grade tea than you get in teabags.

There are various of tea types on each tea shop, and maybe you shold know what kind of tea do you want? Different types of tea have different methods of tea, so there are have the difference between the original tea and flavored tea.