Sunday, August 29, 2010

TeaViews - A Tea Review Site with Forums

Gingko of Life in Teacup inspired me by a recent post about online tea communities to write some posts about tea communities myself. I decided to start by writing about TeaViews.


Teaviews is a group tea review website. The site has a team of reviewers, and solicits donations from tea companies which it then distributes to its reviewers, in a self-selecting process that pairs reviewers with the styles of tea that they most enjoy. The website has a blog-like format, and is indexed by brand and categories of different styles of tea. It also has a page for each reviewer so you can get a sense of where each reviewer is coming from in their approach of tea. Teaviews also has a tea discussion forum which is open to the public.

Teaviews is a well-established site, with reviews going back to mid-2007, and the forum goes back at least to early 2008. As of writing this post, Teaviews currently boasts 3,436 reviews of 2,539 different teas from 187 brands; currently the site lists 52 reviewers on their site.

What I like most about Teaviews:
  • The process of pairing reviewers with types of tea that they prefer leads to positive, enthusiastic reviews.
  • The website is attractive and easy to use.
  • The number of reviews is extensive.
  • The reviewers are independent of any tea company; because the site is not open to the public and is selective about its reviewers, the standard of quality of reviews is consistently high.
  • The reviewers are a friendly bunch, and many are active on twitter and other websites.
  • Although the forum is not the biggest or most active tea forum on the internet, I find that it is a very friendly place. I also like how the forum is a place where the general public can engage in discussion with the team of reviewers.

I'm a bit crazy in that I like participating in 16 billion different online communities...but if you haven't done so already, I'd recommend checking out Teaviews. I know I have an interest in one tea community website, but I think different sites have different strengths, and I would encourage everyone to look at all of what's out there.

2 comments:

  1. I like teaviews very much too. I like how the reviewers give very thoughtful and specific comments on various aspects of a tea. I think it's a great site for small vendors to go over. They handle tea samples for tasting in a highly organized way. There are a few moments when I wish I were not a vendor so that I could have been a reviewer :D

    I wish to see more posts with pictures showing up on their forum. I tried it once and found the forum functions support image files very well.

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  2. Maybe I should try that...I didn't even know they supported posting images in forums.

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