Good unflavored teas
Hi everyone! I’m writing here because I am on the quest of becoming an unflavored tea connoisseur :) I’m from the province of Quebec, in Canada and I live near a Davidstea store. I have tried a lot of their flavored teas because I was trying to find an alternative to fruit juices when I get cravings for that. Now I’m getting a little tired of all these added flavours and I would like to appreciate more the “straight” teas. I would like to stay away mainly from fruity or dessert flavours, I don’t mind things like jasmine.
Do you have any recommendations for a beginner? I have a lot of sencha from different stores so I would be interested in other kinds of tea. I’m open to pretty much anything besides that.
I have tried some unflavored teas from Davidstea and I really like their Tung Ting Vietnam Oolong, but I haven’t been blown away by their Golden Pu’erh, their Sencha and their White Peony. I’m wondering if the unflavored teas from that store are worth it compared to what I could find in other stores. Are there any must-try unflavored teas from Davids?
I also checked out the Butiki Teas website and they seem to have a lot of high quality teas. It’s quite expensive though with the shipping charges so I would like to place an order to sample some of their teas that are really worth the price. Do you have any ideas?
Have any of you tried some tea from the Camellia Sinensis store? How does the quality compare to Davidstea and Butiki?
Are there any other online stores that I should check out and that would ship to my area for a reasonable price?
Thanks a lot for reading my topic and I will really appreciate your answers :)
I’m not sure about shipping rates to Canada, but I’ve gotten a lot of samples from Adagio teas. Most are between $2-$3 for .5oz samples.
Bonjour!
I would suggest trying the verdant sampler, or i would highly suggest teavivre – the shipping is reasonable to canada AND they have sampler sizes and packs. If you like green tea, dens tea has a 3$ sampler as well.
I would stay away from adagio’s in my personal opinion, davids tea is better and their shipping to Canada is seriously insane.
I HIGHLY recommend butiki teas as well, though I understand the shipping barrier. If nothing else, try some of the other companies and then you may be able to swap as your cupboard grows, for samples of Stacy’s teas.
I would second the recommendation of Teavivre. Great tea at good prices. Plus, their samplers offer 5 teas for about $10 to $15, letting you try a wide variety of teas for not too much money. The only down side is that they specialize in Chinese teas. To me, this isn’t too big a disadvantage, though I need to go elsewhere for Darjeeling and decaf.
Upton Tea Imports. I’ve only bought their African teas thus far, so I’m personally not sure about the quality of other teas (they do have quite a variety, though). But their samples go for $1 per 10 grams on average.
Their shipping rates to Canada: http://uptontea.com/shopcart/help/HELPinternationalRates.asp?#exact
Tealux is in Montreal. http://www.tealux.ca/
They have a vast assortment of unflavored (and flavored) teas. They offer sample sizes, 25 gram, 50 g options. I’m still wading though the assortment I ordered, but everything I’ve tried so far I’ve liked.
I hope that you find what you are looking for.
I second that, Dexter, I have recently discovered them and though I’m not crazy about their flavoured teas so far, I am quite impressed with their straight teas. I have bought so many samples that I am far from being done with everything, but I already know that some of them will be reordered in much larger quantity! The ratio quality/quantity over price is pretty impressive, I’m in love with their milk oolong, only 11$ for 100g!
They don’t seem to have that big of a following here on Steepster, or at least I haven’t seen too many mentions of them. I like that they have samples, I ordered a TON of them on my last order. Really need to post some tasting notes and try more of what I have.
Lol, I also ordered a TON cause I couldn’t make up my mind! You’re right, they’re not really present here. I think they should post more often, that’s how I got to take advantage of their 30%off Easter sale. They have a good product, I think it’s only a matter of time people start reviewing more…So many teas, so little time :-)
i ordered a bunch of them witg the girls here and we’ve been largely unimpressed with their flavoured teas. I trust teafairy’s opinion in the unflavoured teas though. So i’ll likely chance a re-order to pick up some of the unflavoured teas. I do like their sample sizes :)
I haven’t purchased from Camellia Sinensis but if you would like to support a local company I say go for it. I’ve generally heard good things from them. They have a wide variety and generally have a good reputation.
If you are interested in supporting Canadian Companies, and are curious about Indian teas, Capital teas offers 20g samples in most teas starting at $2.50 and has $6.00 shipping to Quebec. http://www.capitaltea.com/shop/home.php
As well the Assam Tea Company has a Vancouver base which offers $1.99 10 cup samplers and has sampler sets of 3-4 teas which allow you to sample either a series of teas and or grades from a specific region or of a particular type of tea. They have $3.95 flat rate shipping ( however you have to purchase at least $19.95 worth of goods) https://www.assamteacompany.ca/home.php
Your experience jibes with mine—I think David’s is better if you’re the sort of person who likes a lot of sweet dessert-y add-on flavors, but if you just want the taste of pure, high quality tea leaves they’re not as useful.
Also agree heartily with the recs for Verdant (awesome quality) and Upton. I really like Upton’s darjeelings and similar (their Nepal teas) in particular, and they have so frickin’ many you can really go to town sampling until you find the estates or flushes etc. you prefer.
If you’re more interested in white and green teas than black or smoky ones, Butiki is great.
Oh, and Damn Fine Tea is good for more straight up “pure flavors of tea” blending quality.
Wow, people on Steepster are so helpful! :) Thanks a lot everyone for the recs, I’ll definitely check them out. I just ordered the sampler packs from Verdant and Den’s tea, can’t wait to start brewing them!
If you are interested in exploring the Chinese teas, I would suggest looking at TeaSpring, TeaVivre and Verdant. Especially TeaSpring. They have a large selection in most types and in my experience a generally good quality. All three of these ship world wide for a very reasonable price.
I am new to ordering online as well. Thanks for all the information steepster tea lovers! I will have to try some of your recommendations. Anyways I have actually placed orders and received my first package from Verdant Teas…I ordered a couple of their dark oolongs (wu yi and dancong). I live in BC Canada and the order came quite fast! I also have order in to Tevivre and the website says that it will take quite a while (approx 6 weeks or so) to get to Canada so I am still anxiously awaiting for the order to arrive:)
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