pal do u have any particular brands of tea u recommend :3 ?
BUSTING THE DOOR DOWN recommendations you say??? Yes. Yes I do holy toledo. This of course all depends on if you’re wanting more pure tea or flavored tea, so I will list them in no particular order and throw out a few of the teas I like from each :)
Sugimoto — GREAT for Japanese style teas. I love their hojicha and regularly buy their sencha as gifts for my ma. I also really really love their wakoucha, which is a rarer Japanese black tea!!
Adagio — a nice brand for when you’re first getting into tea methinks, they have a good price point and fun flavored oolongs that I really like, like their cherry marzipan oolong, coconut pouchong, vanilla oolong, and almond oolong. With their flavored black teas you gotta steep them maybe 3 minutes and no more in my experience, as the ceylon they use as their base tends to get bitter pretty easily if you make it any stronger 😢
Yunnan Sourcing — pretty nice if you’re looking for Chinese (and sometimes Taiwanese) teas, I really loved their honey orchid dan cong oolong (it tasted like FLOWERS and the leaves smelled like honey when wet!!) and have some lapsang souchong from them that I’ve been meaning to try after I use up my adagio lapsang. I’m not sure what’s happening exactly with them atm with all the tariffs and stuff, but they have separate U.S. and international sites (yunnansourcing.us and yunnansourcing.com respectively).
The Gilded Teafling — they make my absolute favorite lavender lapsang AND caramel chai I’m like dying I need to put in an order soon but I’m so drowning in other tea that I’m going to make myself wait until midway through summer. But yes. The lavender lapsang is floral, smoky, and absolutely delightful and I always describe it as like. If you add a bit of sweetener it tastes like toasted candy. And I drank that caramel chai so fast it is my favorite it is to DIE for. I love their blends so much 🙏😭❤️✨
And other than that there’s another company that I’m going to try to called Friday Afternoon Tea. I have an order I put in and will let everyone know my thoughts when it gets here 🫡 like their stuff looks so fun, I’m really excited for the earl gay, the flavored oolongs, and the unsmoked lapsang lmfao
I have yet to heavily explore stuff like Indian or Nepali teas but I did buy a nice supermarket chai from an Indian market. I believe it’s “Red Label” masala chai so if you ever run into that, it’s a pretty nice one 👍
As a side note, for anyone new to tea, I generally recommend getting loose leaf tea if you can, just because the flavors tend in my experience to not get as astringent as easily with full leaf Chinese, Taiwanese, or Japanese teas. In comparison my supermarket chai is a CTC one I think so the leaves are pretty crush-tear-curled, but I believe with some Indian teas that can be intentional and preferred and possibly aid in getting a stronger brew. Sugimoto and Adagio do offer bagged teas if that is your preference! But I find loose leaf more tasty personally
And so, yeah! Some hearty recommendations. Thank u for giving me the chance to babble about my current fixation hobby I’m always happy to share my love of tea lol ✌️✨
