Red Blossom Tea

Today I had the chance to stop by Red Blossom Tea in San Francisco. I had known about Red Blossom for quite some time, its notoriety even having a section in the book The Way to Tea. Albeit I was a bit cautious of really checking out a tea store on Grant street in SF, right in the heart of chinatown. I thought to myself how serious of a teashop could it be, sharing a street with all of those shops that sell I heart SF sweatshirts, Golden Gate Bridge shot glasses, and CA license plates with your name on them. Nonetheless though I went to check them out and was pleasantly surprised.

Red Blossom is a very small tea shop. It is a narrow little place, one side lined with all of the cans of tea and the other lined with a myriad of teawares. The decor is quite modern and minimal in it's design, very much feeling like Teance, but more minimalist. Quite the contrast to the rest of Grant with baskets full of red and gold trinkets. As befitting their location and style, they offer Chinese and Taiwanese teas. In the middle of the store they have a pair of tea tables setup with beautiful tea trays and all that they would need to pour up a wonderful cup of tea. While I marvelled at some of the teas (including a Song Zhong Phoenix) the staff was more than eager to help me and answer any questions I had. Also while I was waiting for a few teas to be packaged up the staff also offered me a sample of a few similar teas (for me it was an aged Phoenix). A friend of mine who was with me, and doesn't know much about tea, was more than educated on the differences in teas and all of those interesting tidbits that you learn when first entering the world of tea.

The staff is very helpful and for the most part knowledgeable, amusingly at some points. One staff member looked at the label for Xin Ren Xiang (Almond Fragrance Phoenix) and simply referred to it as Almond to the chuckles of a more fluent staff member. Knowledge yes, Mandarin pronunciation needs a bit of work. Although it's not like I could do any better.

Teas are packaged upon demand in mylar bags and heat sealed. Prior to that they are stored in the traditional large tins. I can't wait to do some reviews of these teas. If you're in SF it's definitely worth stopping in to check them out.

Black Friday

Black Friday, the most notorious shopping day of the year, is almost upon us. While most retailers are having very lackluster sales this year it appears there are a few surprises in store for us yet.

Starting on Black Friday Yogic Chai is going to be having a 40% off sale.

Click here for Yogic Chai. Coupon code to be posted tommorrow.

TeaGschwendner is also having a sale this year, 20% off everything except Zojirushi, capresso, and already discounted items. Coupon code is: BIGSALE

Wegmans Food Markets - Tea Bar

This week I had the chance to go to a Wegmans Food Market again. This particular Wegmans has a tea bar, which I had visited about a year ago. The tea bar is it's own little section of the store, where patrons can sit and enjoy a cup of tea at the bar or one of the few tables, smell different leaves, or pick up some loose leaf teas. It also has a few assorted sweets to go with tea and tea related accessories.

When I first went there last year the teabar was a relatively recent addition, and was still maturing. At the time teas were prepared as a gaiwan service. Each service comes with a tea related sweet as well. The selection of tea paraphenalia consisted of a few higher end tea related items such as a gaiwan set and a tea ocean.

When I visited the tea bar this time the service switched to a more traditional teapot service. I believe they are using some of the for life teapots. Their product selection also seems to have changed somewhat. They have a selection of tea related books, a few locally made tea products, and what surprised me the most was some products from other tea vendors. Notably they had products from Red Blossom, Adagio, and Rishi.

Their tea selection is quite varied, but has a bit of an emphasis on Japanese Green tea. They have about as many Japanese green teas as they do everything else, but considering this is a loose leaf tea selection in a grocery store it is quite impressive. The green teas are also stored in a refrigerator for freshness. They even serve matcha.

White Crane Tea Co.

The White Crane Tea Co. is a rather small tea vendor in Japantown, San Francisco. The store itself is tucked away in a corner of the center so if you don't know that it is there it may be quite easy to overlook. Once you have managed to find the store itself you'll be shocked at the actual size of it. The whole of the store is probably no larger than 5' x 10'. The proprietor though is a very pleasant individual and will be happy to help you decide on any particular tea. Their selection is surprisingly vast considering the size of the store, but yet small by comparison to many other tea vendors. They are very much specialized in Japanese green tea. Their inventory is surprisingly evenly distributed between gyokuro, sencha, and matcha. One individual I heard remarked and seemed surprised that they stored their matcha in a refrigerator. Pricing is not for the faint of heart, most of their teas being on the pricier side of things, the Midori Sencha I picked up being one of the cheapest teas they offered, but not in terms of price per gram(ppg). Other less expensive teas are sold in larger packages. Purchases are very nicely packaged, wrapped carefully, and then decorated and bundled up. To finish it off he decorates the paper with some calligraphy as well, putting thought into what to write for each package. I expect that many of the teas he offers may be quite exceptional, but I think that I will take my time selecting teas to try.

Sugiomoto USA

Vendor: Sugimoto USA

The first that I heard about this company was when they announced the results of the tastings for the World Tea Expo this year. Sugimoto USA (SA) won the first place for their genmaicha in the flavored/blended category for loose tea. I looked them up shortly afterwards and found that they have a very small selection and was intrigued. They only have 3 main products, a sencha, genmaicha and hojicha. These are available in an assortment of forms, both loose and teabag, in varying quantities. They do nicely have sample packs available as well, something that I wish more stores would offer. I tried all three of their current offerings and they were all exceptional teas. I was even honored to try out temomicha due to their kindness, and hope to experience it again if they are able to offer it next year. While their selection is very limited, it doesn't need to be expansive when your product is top notch. I highly suggest anyone who enjoys a good Japanese tea to give Sugimoto USA a try.

Tearoom - Lamyx Tea Bar

I recently had the opportunity to visit Lamyx Tea Bar in Oakland, CA. I had gotten their card when I had visited the tea symposium in Berkeley earlier this year, but had never gotten the chance to swing by and take a look.

Lamyx is probably best described as a coffee house, but with much less coffee. They have an assortment of tables, benches, and the typical comfy chair to sit in. Tea is served in a small tetsubin and a yunomi. Well at least for the genmaicha that I ordered. By the look of the place though, that was standard fare for anyone ordering tea (not to go obviously) regardless of the type. Their menu also included some more interesting forms of tea aside from traditional loose leaf teas, including tea smoothies, boba, and well coffee.

Probably one of the nicest things about Lamyx was that they were open until midnight. This makes it a great place to hang out at and not really worry about the time. The environment has a very pleasant casual atmosphere.

In the back there is a small area for teawares and teas. Their teas are in 3 oz tins and they offer samplers. Their selection of teawares are rather limited, but have some nice pieces in it. They also have a rather broad selection of teas with a well balanced offering.

I enjoyed the time that I had spent there and have a feeling that if it was closer to where I lived, I would spend a good amount of time there.

Vendor - Tea Gschwendner

I recently placed my first order to Tea Gschwendner (TG for short, I keep spelling Gschwendner wrong) and thought it appropriate to do a quick review on them.

TG is a tea company based out of Germany, although they do have a worldwide presence. They do have a pair of stores in Illinois, and a partner store in Michigan which sells their teas, but aside from that their presence in the US is internet based. They have locations in many other countries, but mostly in Germany. My experiences with them thus far have been all virtual.

TG carries a very wide variety of teas, ranging from high grade single estate Darjeelings to Herbals to Oolongs to Whites to Greens. They cover a wide variety of teas, but it would seem that the majority of their teas are black teas. Considering the company is from Germany this is not too surprising. Although what is surprising is how good their selection is while being so broad. At first you would think that they would be a jack of all trades company, dabbling in many areas, but not having very specific teas in any particular area. This does not seem to be the case, at least for what I looked at; Darjeelings and Japanese Greens. Their selection of Darjeelings was very impressive, they had a number of different grades of Darjeelings ranging from FOP to SFTGFOP 1. They also had a number of estate specific teas. Their Japanese Green selection also was somewhat varied, encompassing the main classes of Japanese green teas, as well as some lesser seen types and different grades.

They do offer a variety of sizes, 50g, 100g, and 250g. This is nice because it offers a nice price break for larger volumes. They also have a free shipping break at $35.00, which is fairly low and thereby nice for those who don't want to pay for shipping.

For my particular experience, I ordered a few cups and some genmaicha. They shipped the order in a very nicely packaged box, wrapping the fragile items with paper and bubble wrap, and filling the rest of the box with packing peanuts. If you are looking for a low packing material company though, there was a lot of packing to protect my items. My items took up about 1/10 th of the volume of the box if that. They also added the wrong packing list with my order, but that didn't really matter as my order did match what I did order.

Their tea is packaged in a double lined paper bag with a roll over top similar to those found on most bags of coffee. I was a bit disappointed to find that it was not a nitrogen flushed package, especially considering how much emphasis they place on their quality control on their website. Aside from that my interactions with their customer service were quite good, and the tea was good, but would have been helped if stored in nitrogen flush bags I believe.

I look forward to trying out other teas from them in the future.

Tea Chai Te

Tea Chai Te

This was a little tearoom that I found after dinner one night and roaming around Portland. This wasn’t by any means an easy to find or very obvious location. If it were not for a sign on the sidewalk I probably wouldn’t have found the store.

The location of the store is actually on the second floor of what looks like a converted house. It almost felt like someone converted an upstairs apartment into a small tea room. The arrangement consisted of a few tables and couches organized in this small space with a wall of small jars. The wall of small jars was numbered for each jar with a small catalog of their teas below it. Each of their teas is numbered and priced as either Premium or Rare tea. The small jars each had a cork stopper so you could smell the tea if you liked. They stored their teas in relatively small cans for weighing out and packaged them in small paper bags similar to coffee bags.

Rating: 5/10

Conclusion: The feel of this tearoom was very cozy and feels like somewhere that you might like to go to spend an evening with some friends and just hang out. It felt a lot like a smaller version of the coffee shop from friends. I’m not sure what to think of this place as a place to find a good loose leaf tea. I’ll soon see how the tea is from them.

The Tao of Tea

The Tao of Tea – Leaf Room

This is the second half of the Tao of Tea’s original location. The Leaf Room is their brick and mortar store location. The store itself has a very wide variety of teas and teaware. It is a combination of loose teas, prepackaged teas, and teaware. There was also a small tatami mat area as well as what looked to be a counter that could have been used for sampling teas. It had an assortment of items on it so it didn’t look like it was being actively used to serve tea.

The teaware selection was very eclectic at this store, it consisted of teaware from all over the world. It had English style teacups to yixing teapots to Mate Bombillas. Their Japanese teaware selection was small, but more varied than I would have thought. They had a few tetsubin, tokoname kyusus, and matcha bowls. Most surprising was the full arrangement of the accessories for Chanoyu, I haven’t seen many fully rounded tea stores offering natsume.

Their tea selection was rather vast, but at the same time they were out of a lot of their teas. This was a very good sign considering the time of the year, they were out of a lot of the spring harvest teas saying they were waiting on the new 2008 harvest. Pricing for teas was offered as prepackaged in double lidded tins, where the tea is vacuum sealed, or packaged from their stock tins on a per ounce basis. They also had a surprising number of puerh teas, including one which was probably a two foot wide cake.

Loose teas were packaged either in small plastic lined roll down bags similar to those you find in the grocery store for coffee beans, or small plastic lined paper coated Ziploc bags. This seemed to depend on the volume and crushability of the tea in question. Prepackaged teas were vacuum packed and then placed into double lidded tin cans.

Rating: 8/10

Conclusion: Considering that it was a rather small store they had a rather varied selection, yet covered a lot of different bases. The store like the tearoom was rather dark, and the staff could have been a bit friendlier. I’m eager to try the teas I picked up to see what I think of this brand in general.

The Tao of Tea

The Tao of Tea – Tearoom side

I had the opportunity recently to stop by the Tao of Tea in Portland. The Tao of Tea has been a brand that I have been interested in for some time, but not gotten around to trying. The Tao of Tea’s original location, which I had the chance to visit, consists of two main businesses, the tearoom and the leaf room. The two sides are actually separate locations with different hours. Today I’m writing about the tearoom.

The tearoom was a very interestingly decorated room. The décor was from around the world with different styles of items from an assortment of tea producing countries. Their counters were filled with a wide variety of different tea cups, bowls, mugs, and other serving accoutrements. When you walk in they allow you to pick whatever you like for seating, which is very nice because almost every booth or table is completely unique in its style. The two booths that I saw had rough broken solid stone seatbacks for part of them, and interesting bright red cushions. The décor had accents of black bamboo, Buddha statues, masks (which I believe were either Indian or Thai), pictures of tea fields, production, and all sorts of other tea related items. My favorite item was probably the tea crates that were used to ship tea in. The table I sat at was next to their display case of cups, which was supported by a tea crate marked as being for Lapsang Souchoung of all things. The lighting was rather dark, although I overheard them mention that two of the lights in the tearoom were out.

The menu was very expansive and very interesting. It looked as though they were offering almost their entire offering of teas, although I did not see some of their more special promotional teas, such as the competition grade senchas which were available on their website. It did have a large variety of teas including a large variety of non-teas as well. I opted to try out their Gyokuro. I do have to admit though that judging them based on their Gyokuro might be a bit of a harsh measure, but I feel that it has the most room for showing how good or bad a tearoom could be. They serve their Gyokuro in a very large kyusu style teapot. I mean kyusu style because the handle was on the side, the volume of the pot was larger than any kyusu that I have ever seen, this pot was somewhere around 24 oz. The spout also reminded me of a yixing teapot spout. As I would have guessed though the Gyokuro was brewed much like a sencha, the water for the steeping was around sencha temperature, well above the good Gyokuro brewing temperature, and the flavor was rather weak. I wasn’t really surprised by this after seeing their teapot, I didn’t think they would follow the 80mL to 10g ratio that most Gyokuros use. That would be one massive pile of Gyokuro. The flavor of the tea was much as I would expect having come from originally brewing my Gyokuro in such a manner until I learned better. It’s rather hard to judge the tea though because of the way it was brewed.

They also serve some food snacks there. I didn’t partake of any though since I had just eaten prior to heading over there.

Rating: 5/10

Conclusion: The experience was rather pleasant and relaxing, although their brewing technique could use some improvement. They are also more of a tea restaurant than a tea bar. This seems nice for what it is, but part of the fun of tea is the learning.

Tearoom/store: Seven Cups

Today I thought I would review a tearoom / store that I recently had the chance to visit. The store is named Seven Cups. It is owned by a husband and wife, the husband who spent a good deal of time as a tea buyer, and his wife who is a certified Chinese tea master. The name of the store comes from a poem by Lu Tong, which is on their website. The store is divided into two main areas, the front area being the actual store where the back half is for lessons and as a tearoom. The front is filled with an assortment of jars with samples of each of their teas (and from where they get their teas for serving in the tea room) along with foil sealed airtight pouches for purchase. About a third of the front room is taken up by their selection of pu-erh cakes. I'm not versed at all in pu-erh, but from what I heard it was apparently a quite good selection of pu-erh. They also had a few sampler packs, individual samplers, and a good deal of teaware. They had a surprising selection of yixing teapots and assorted accessories. Their prices seemed to be quite reasonable, at least for those items that I had seen at other stores.

Their selection of tea is almost exclusively Chinese. I believe I spied some genmaicha sitting on a shelf somewhere. And of the teas that they had, most of them were teas that I had heard of or read about, but never saw before in a tea store. This included some yellow tea and some fancier oolongs, like Big Red Robe. These rarer teas do have a price to match though.

I had the opportunity to try out some Yellow tea, Meng Ding Huang Ya, and this was my first time trying it out. It was incredibly smooth and mellow, it was worth it's reputation. I of course had to get some. The review will be coming soon.

Another thing to note was the tea club that they have. It is a combination discount club and reward program in one. It's free to sign up for and you get a 10% discount. On top of that every dollar earns you a point toward a 10 dollar gift certificate, 100 points per 10 dollar cert. At the same time they are currently running a promotion with 20% off everything. This does not combine with the 10% discount though. You do accrue points though. I couldn't help but pick out a few items, including the wonderful yellow tea.

If you are ever in the Tucson area, I would suggest stopping in and looking around. Or if you are looking for something special and Chinese in the way of tea, check out their website. They also have a few videos and the like about tea and how to brew them.