We are coffee experts, passionate about coffee, its in our name, its how we got started.
Tea is a side project for us, 5% of our sales. But we take it seriously. There's a whole world of tea. It grows in all different countries, and each country has a different varietal, a different terroir, a different processing method. The world of tea is just as exciting as the world of coffee.
Tea has a different strain of caffeine, and you can be used to drinking coffee, but if you rarely drink tea and have a mug of tea it will give you a buzz.
We just got in a pallet of tea, 1100 pounds of tea, that's like 300,000 mugs of tea. It's high end, super complex tasting teas, from passionate farmers, rare varietals, rare processes. A really expensive tea costs between $50 and $100 a pound. That's like 20-30 cents a mug of tea. A nice mug of coffee sells for $16 a pound. But that's $1 a mug. The rarest teas in the world are a third of the price as a nice coffee when you break it down.
Just saying, maybe you need some tea in your life. Pick a leaf off a tree and soak it in hot water and drink the water. Nasty right? But do it with a rare tea leaf and its a world of delicious flavors. Blows your mind. From a dried leaf????? How??
Most retailers upcharge the tea 400% and charge you $5 an ounce for normal tea. $40 an ounce for special tea. We upcharge 10%. The tea that costs us $50 a pound in bulk quantity to import, we'll sell it to you for $55. $3.50 an ounce. We just want to let you try it.
Tea lasts 20 years. You know that bag of coffee you just bought from us that starts losing flavor in 4 weeks? Nah. 20 years on tea. It's dried, preserved, waiting for the right situation to make you happy.
Buy a pack of Tea Filters from our Accessories page ($4) and then try some of the world's best tea and see if it hooks you:
White tea: Silver Needles -- the top fuzzy bud and leaf from each bush, the first picking. Used to be so rare, only the Chinese emperor drank it. It's still REALLY rare, but you can try a mug of it.
Oolong tea: Morning Mangolia. Take a light oolong, and surround it with magnolia blossoms. It's like a spiritual sensation that wakes up all of your senses.
Green tea: Iccha Kariban. Grown under intense shade grown conditions so that the chlorophyll is intense, and then steamed. Tastes like a mug of grass. Try a couple mugs of this one. The first one is odd, but it grows on you. You'll want to try it a few more times.
Yellow tea: High Mountain. Yellow tea is a green tea that they throw a wet blanket on while drying it, which makes it not taste like grass. There's an asparagus undertone, but some sweetness, almost broth-like, oddly satisfying. Yellow tea never really made it to the USA, but we carry it.
Black tea: Keemun Hao Ya A: Rumored to be the real cause of the Opium War because both sides wanted to be able to drink this tea every day. It's that delicious.
Herbal tea: NOT A TEA! Herbal tea is not from the tea plant, and doesn't have caffeine, and just is a concoction of herbs and roots and fruits and spices that taste good when steeped in hot water. That makes it REALLY inexpensive to produce. Autumn Spice is our blend of licorice root, cinnamon, cloves, and orange peel. It's fascinatingly sweet and soothing.