Tea Vendor Tiers
How would you tier up your vendors in terms of quality? From where I’ve bought from I’d say,
High- Zealong
Mid- Yunnan Sourcing, Harney & Sons
Low- Adagio, Teavivre, Tleaft, T2
I’m trying to make my way up to more high quality teas. Any recommendations?
I am not familiar with Zealong. Where are they from? I do think that Yunnan Sourcing, Harney and Sons, and Teavivre sell some good quality teas and Yunnan Sourcing is without a doubt one of the best places on the planet to get puerh tea from. They will never claim their tea comes from 1000 year old trees and they will never claim they are selling you fifty year old tea. You get exactly what you pay for and no outlandish claims are made. You can spend a lot more for tea than you pay at Yunnan Sourcing but don’t expect that you will get far better tea. Someone like Whispering Pines may have somewhat better tea than Yunnan Sourcing but he is very small batch and much higher in price. That being said he has a great shop too.
Zealong is from New Zealand, overpriced but it’s the tea I had is where I really noticed how much better lose leaf is, big leaves and good amount of infusions.
Yeah YS is great, just started getting into puerh with a sampler pack from Teavivre so I hope to get into stuff on YS.
Yunnan Sourcing sells samples on basically all their more expensive puerhs. The ones they sell for $20 a cake they do not always offer samples. They also have excellent black tea and many people like their oolong.
Agreed, Yunnan Sourcing is without a doubt one of the best places for puerh tea:
https://steepster.com/teas/yunnan-sourcing
A lot of this will depend on where you live and what you are looking for… example: on the east coast I recommend people ordering oolong from Beautiful Taiwan Tea and from the west coast I refer them to Floating Leaves. Now both are fantastic places to either order from or gather information, but ultimately we all like things fast!
Quality wise… most all of the western facing vendors who have faces or names known will be of great value or quality; quick reference would be BLT, CLT, W2T, YS, TU…
All of those abbreviations represent a shop that people associate with their lineup as well as the person who goes out to the farmers and provides the awesome stuff we get to try.
(it’s late and I wanted to respond)
I definitely would not put Teavivre in the same category as Adagio and T2. They belong in the middle tier at least.
Rating the high-tier vendors is a little more challenging. I would say the ones with a more curated selection who consistently offer high quality products would qualify. As a starting point Whispering Pines, Verdant, Bitterleaf, and Taiwan Sourcing could be considered high end. Mei leaf is also highly regarded although I haven’t ordered from them yet.
I have heard that Mei Leaf has good tea, but then again if their tea is so good why do they feel the need to lie about the age of the trees. They could not obtain material from 1600 year old trees at market prices for what they were charging. These super ancient trees are super rare and companies just doon’t make big pressings from them.
Without getting into another tree age debate, let me just say that yes, it’s unlikely the tea they got came from a tree that old but I don’t agree that they lied about it. Furthermore one mistake doesn’t invalidate all the other good things they do. Bear in mind that 1) they, like Verdant, don’t specialize in puerh and 2) in a place rife with legends and stories like China, tea sellers are susceptible to passing on unverified information from their farmers. I don’t think it’s their intention to deceive.
Watching the Mei Leaf channel, it’s evident how much effort goes in to seeking out quality tea. Traveling to tea farms all over China/Japan and the battery of taste tests every tea is subjected before selection shows they put in some real thought and care into their products.
Agreed, Teavivre at least belongs in the middle tier. They’re well-regarded for both their black green teas:
https://steepster.com/teas/teavivre
“Rating the high-tier vendors is a little more challenging. I would say the ones with a more curated selection who consistently offer high quality products would qualify.”
Agreed. And the curated suppliers typically specialize in one type of tea such as puerh.
How is Mei Leaf’s international shipping? A lot of times shipping from Europe is fairly expensive.
Someone recently told me they think MeiLeaf’s teas are alright, but very expensive for what they are. I’ve only tried their Sacred Owl shou and I felt it was a bit too fresh/unaged to drink right away. Nice rustic compression though! I have’t tried their other teas so I have no opinion on their other offerings.
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