While Twinings and Lipton are perfectly good teas, they’re ridiculously easy to find in any grocery store up here (and, I’m assuming, in the US grocery stores as well)… probably not what the OP is looking for, given that he wants something that would give his store a little cachet and that would look good on display.
I quite like Stash, and I find it’s a little less commonplace than the major brands. They also add limited-edition seasonal flavours to their line from time to time, which is a nice touch.
Mighty Leaf is another great brand which I don’t see often in the grocery store. They have a really nice assortment of teas (including some interesting herbal tea blends), and their packaging is gorgeous.
If you’re looking for something a little more high-end, another brand I like is Harney and Sons. Their tins are definitely a cut above Twinings or Lipton as far as attractive packaging goes, and their teabags are made of cloth mesh instead of paper. The quality of the tea itself is also quite good… their peppermint tea is as close as I’ve found to fresh mint. They’re not cheap, though.
I’m also a lapsang souchong fan, but it’s a pretty strange tea – very smoky.
Another interesting tea is pu-erh. I’ve only had it once, and any real connoisseur of pu-erh would probably say it was awful… it was just something I got, cheap, in a Chinatown market. But I liked it – it had a distinctive earthy flavor.
If you carry nice big cheap bags of Assam CTC Mamri tea, I will order them from you. Mamri tea is common as dirt in good big-city South Asian grocery stores, where it sells in 4-pound bags for less than $10, but for the life of me I can’t find it in New England any closer than Boston, or online at anything under double the normal price. It’s the tea used in masala chai (boil it in half milk, half water, with spices and sugar).
It’s the workingman’s tea in India, is what I’m told. CTC stands for something like “crush, tear, curl,” which is to say, big non-tips leaves are well mangled in processing, such that it comes out as little irregular pellets. It’s a STRONG black tea, not subtle, not delicate, and has plenty of caffeine. Dedicated coffee drinkers often like it – not just put up with it when they can’t have coffee, but enjoy it. I know a couple of addicts around here that beg friends relatives who live far away to score them bags by the dozen.
Tea India and Brooke Bond (“Red Label” or “Taj Mahal”) are the two brands I’ve seen most often.
I’m a huge fan of the Gevalia teas, especially their Earl Grey which is the only one which has enough bergamot fro me. (I liek things VERY lemony!)
Also the Teavana “Almond cookie” which tastes sweet without any added suger, and really does assuage a cookie itch, without any calories.
Lastly, I’d like to recommend that you develop a relationship with a Far East direct supplier, and hold an annual “Fresh Tea” special during the white tea harvest. Also have weekly specials on more exotic unblended teas. If you help people become aficionados, you’ll gain a customer base that will never desert you.
You guys are awesome! Thanks for all the feedback. You’re going to have me doing research forever to track all this stuff down.
A friend of mine brought some “flowering tea” back from china. It’s a “bud” about the size of a walnut that’s compressed leaves wrapped around a little chain of blossoms. Drop it in the boiling water and it opens up to form an absolutely beautiful underwater blossom display (using a glass teapot, of course, so you can see it). I just found a distributor for those, and I’m hyped.
I’ll definitely agree on “interesting”. I like herbal teas, too, but when I’m drinking proper tea, I don’t want anything but the tea itself. No bergamon, no orange rind, none of that.
And the best tea I’ve ever had was in Ireland, at assorted B&Bs. I don’t know what brand(s) it was, but it might have been Barry’s.
Stash is the best tea I’ve found in the US, though I’ll admit that there are plenty of brands I haven’t tried. Alternately, if you’re going with herbal teas, my favorites are all Celestial Seasonings, though those aren’t all that hard to find.
I switched to tea a couple of years ago 'cause the 8-10 espresso a day habit was making me a little twitchy.
Looking for a strongly flavoured tea I went thru’ the English and Irish breakfast teas then lapsang souchong (which to me is like drinking a cup of smoked bacon) and am currently on Twinings Traditional Afternoon tea which is supposedly their strongest.
I still wasn’t getting the kick I needed so I bolster that with a Bushells Extra Strong teabag
I was going to mention the unfurling-flowers tea! You need to sell little glass teapots, too. I’d buy some! … I wish there was an easy way to buy/make bubble tea. There seem to be a lot of steps and equipment, so it seems to be a restaurant-only kind of thing, but I’d love to try it.
My favorite would be either yak butter tea or fresh yak milk tea served by Tibetan nomads. It’s hard to get the authentic stuff though without actually going to the Tibetan nomad lands.
Pu’er Cha from Yunnan, especially the 100+ year old stuff, is pretty nice. Pu’er is the espresso of tea.
My wife and I are visiting Colorado and did a tour of the Celestial Seasonings plant this morning. A very aromatic experience, especially wandering into their Peppermint and Spearmint storage room!
We purchased a very delicious Chocolate Caramel Enchantment Chai, although there were lots of delicious options.
Elmwood, a local business, carries a lovely selection of teas and blends. I drink them regularly. The owners used to run a fantastic tea room in Perryville but closed it to focus on their other business.
Earl Grey tastes, to me, like…tweed.
Not that I’ve ever imbibed tweed, that I am aware, but…really.
It’s…tweed in a cup. And I really don’t mean that due just to the English connections or anything. It tastes like tweed!
I’m going to have to find some of that CTC tea, I think; I love chai.
