SpecialTeas - Featured Defunct Tea Company

Back in June I featured an inactive tea blog, Tea Nerd. Today I follow suit by featuring a defunct tea company, SpecialTeas. SpecialTeas was still in business when I founded RateTea, but I did not have the opportunity to actually try any of their teas until after the company closed.

Most of what I know about this company is from reading the reviews and commentary of others. Here is a screenshot of the company's website in April of 2008, a typical example of what it looked like:

What did I like about SpecialTeas?

• A clear focus on single-origin pure teas - Although SpecialTeas had quite a selection of blends and herbal teas as well, the company had a strong emphasis on single-origin pure teas. The website classified tea both by type and region, drawing attention to the influence of region on tea.
• Large and diverse selection - SpecialTeas had a very large selection, not only carrying many different types of tea but many specific teas of certain types, such as a rather large selection of Chinese green teas and Indian black teas.
• Good prices - The prices of the few teas from this company that I tried were quite reasonable, and I heard good things about the company's prices from people who had sampled more of the company's teas. All but a few of the ratings of this company's teas on RateTea give this company 5/5 or 4/5 on value.

If you want to read what is probably going to be my last ever review of this company, I recently posted a review of SpecialTeas 546 Mountain Peak Mao Feng Organic, a green tea from Zhejiang province which was quite pleasing.

Why did SpecialTeas close?

SpecialTeas was bought out by Teavana, and then closed. The buyout may have happened as early as 2005, even though SpecialTeas remained open for years after that; there's some strongly suggestive evidence for this buyout highlighted on RateTea's page on SpecialTeas. In 2005, the company was bought by a company that shared a business address and two key corporate officers with Teavana. The company has now officially announced that SpecialTeas has been merged into Teavana. The domain name specialteas.com now redirects to a page on Teavana's website announcing this merger, and offering free shipping to former customers of SpecialTeas. You can use this as a clever trick if you wish to obtain free shipping when buying from Teavana's website.

I personally think that much was lost when Teavana closed SpecialTeas. The two companies had quite different selection and pricing. SpecialTeas in particular had a much broader selection of single origin pure teas, and their prices also tended to be lower. I also never heard any complaints about pushy sales practices associated with SpecialTeas, which has unfortunately been a persistent complaint about Teavana, although to be fair, SpecialTeas did not have physical store locations of its own so it is hard to compare the two companies on this level.

Dragonwater Tea closes:

As another loss, there used to be a company named Dragonwater tea, which was supplied by SpecialTeas, and which closed when SpecialTeas was closed. I learned about this company through a 2009 thread on TeaChat about Teavana and SpecialTeas, in which people were speculating about the relationship between these two companies before any information had been made public officially. I found it interesting to learn about this company, because it showed how value can be lost in society when a company buys out its supplier and closes it.

The economics and ethics of the buyout:

Acquisition of a competitor is a prime example of an anti-competitive practice, generally agreed on by economists as having a negative effect on the economy because it reduces competition and thus reduces market efficiency. As such, these sorts of buyouts and closings raise ethical concerns for me. They are usually legal (with the exception of certain buyouts, restricted under US anti-trust law), but I am not convinced that they are the most ethical decision. I recognize that people have different values and beliefs about business and economics, but personally, I believe anti-competitive business behavior to be something that is often unethical.

Beyond ethical concerns about indirect economic effects, in the tea industry there is an additional, more direct ethical and human rights concern related to anti-competitive behavior. If a company buys out and closes a competitor that sells the same tea for a lower price, leaving the tea only available on the market at the higher price, the result of people buying the tea at the higher price is that a smaller portion of the money being spent on tea reaches the original producer. This causes wealth to concentrate in the already wealthy country, keeping the poorer producing country poor.

This is also a matter that concerns me.

What do you think?

Did you ever try SpecialTeas? What do you think of their buyout and closing by Teavana? Do you think Teavana provides a comparable experience to SpecialTeas, or has something of value been lost by the closing of this company? Do you think that this buyout constitutes anti-competitive behavior, or just part of normal, healthy business activity? Have you ever thought about how this sort of buyout could hinder fair wages for tea producers by causing wealth to concentrate in already-wealthier Western countries?

Price and Deals When Buying Tea Online

I recently received a box of samples from the newly launched Paisley Tea Co, which is an effort of Two Leaves Tea (Formerly Two Leaves and a Bud).

This post is not about the company's teas; I have more to say about them later; if you're itching to read more, you can peek at my lengthy review of their English Breakfast on RateTea. This post, however, is about a phenomenon that I've seen occur with a variety of companies that sell online. This post is directed both at tea shoppers and tea companies, and I hope there will be some useful tidbits in the post for both audiences.

Pictured here is a clipping from a screenshot of the page for Paisley Tea Co's Organic English Breakfast, on the official online store of Two Leaves Tea:

The price, for a box of 24 tea bags, is $5.95. Now, take a peek at this screenshot, taken from Amazon.com:

Now the price is $3.82. But the product is out of stock. I discovered this page, supposedly selling this tea, after reading a post on The Everyday Tea Blog, titled Paisley Tea Co, Organic Double Earl Grey. This price is discounted over 35% off the price listed on the company's official site. A little more searching turns up the following listings:

These are sold by Amazon.com's Add-on program, and some of them are in stock. This program lists items that would be cost-prohibitive to ship on their own, and they are intended to be purchased when someone makes a larger ($25 or more) purchase from Amazon, and they ship for free in these large purchases.

Sometimes you can find deals online:

If you are looking to buy a product online, you can sometimes find it cheaper than the list price on the company's main website. You may also sometimes find coupon codes if you search for them. This can be good news if you are a tea drinker looking to buy tea online. Three suggestions I'd have if you want to look for deals on a product you've already decided to buy would be:

• Check Amazon.com, eBay, and other major online marketplaces.
• Try searching Google shopping.
• Do a basic search for coupon codes for the company you are buying from.

Is this sort of setup beneficial for the company selling the tea? Often, yes, as I explain below. I do want to point out, however, that these "off-the-main-website" deals usually are limited to larger, more mainstream tea companies.

Why do such discounts exist?

Teas can be available at a discount for a variety of reasons. Some of them include:

• If a company is hoping to sell a major portion of their products through Amazon, eBay, or any other marketplace website which has its own reputation system, sellers sometimes initially sell products at a discounted price in order to establish a track record. They forgo additional profits as an investment to establish their reputation. This practice is most common with smaller companies.
• If a company is launching a new line of teas, or a new tea brand, like Paisley tea in this example, they may offer a discount to help jump start their new products.
• Sometimes packaged teas end up in the hands of a company (or individual) that cannot easily sell them or put them to use, and wants to get rid of them, and they then mark the price down below the company's list price, as a way of recovering some of their loss. Discount stores can also buy random shipments of tea for discounted prices, and sell them at a modest profit, still below list price.

A word of caution on bargains being displayed but not available:

I just want to highlight one potential problem that can arise from a setup like the one here, especially if it persists in the long-run.

I think that it can be potentially problematic, and can hurt companies, when there is a lower-priced item available on a third party website, but the item is out of stock. This is especially true if the price is presented as a normal price, rather than being advertised as a special discount (sometimes this can be harmful even if it is in stock). If a person searches around and somehow finds the bargain-priced item labelled as normal (like the Amazon example above), they may get excited and think: "Wow, at that price, I want to buy this product." But then they go to buy it and it is out of stock. But then they see the same product for sale on the company's official site, or in a supermarket, or another store, for the normal price, and it seems overpriced, in comparison to the discount price. They'll be likely to think: "Wow, this store is price gouging." or "This tea is overpriced." and not buy it.

Policing prices:

Pictured here is a rather old police car, a Ford Mustang to be precise; the concept of price policing really has nothing to do with the actual police, and tends to be enforced through contracts between wholesalers and distributors, rather than criminal law. This picture is included strictly for amusement.

Some companies actively police their pricing, enforcing minimum retail prices, because they worry that if their products are too widely available for low prices, they will lose money because people will become less interested in buying the products at a higher price. For example, there is a shoe store that I like very much, called The Natural Shoe Store, on 40th street in Philadelphia. The staff of this store have told me that one company threatened to stop selling them shoes because they had priced them too low, even though they were still selling the shoes at a comfortable profit over the wholesale price.

I don't like the idea of price policing like I described here. I think it goes against the idea of the free market economy, and even if it benefits one business, I think it tends to harm the economy as a whole. But I do think that it is good for businesses to think critically about who is going to see what prices where, and what conclusions they will draw from them. Offering discounts and deals can be a great way to jump-start a new line of teas, or a new brand of tea like Paisley here. In some cases, though, it may be better not to discount.

Rather than policing prices, I think a better approach is to be cautious about where, when, and how much you discount your products.

What do you think?

Do you ever shop around for deals on tea online, that is, deals that go beyond the price listed on the company's main website? How about when buying other sorts of products? For companies: when do you think the best time is to discount? And what do you think of the idea of price policing. Tea companies: would you ever do it? And tea drinkers, do you think it's acceptable for a company to do, or does it undermine the ideals of a market economy?

Tea Bag Selection in Mariposa Co-Op, and Tea Bags and Sustainability

This is the first of at least two posts on the topic of Mariposa Food Co-op. Mariposa has been in operation for quite some time, in West Philadelphia, but it recently moved into a large, new storefront on Baltimore Avenue, near 49th street. At the same time, the co-op opened up its store to the general public; in the past, they only allowed members to shop there.

I am interested in Mariposa for a variety of reasons. One of them is that, like many cooperatives, it is run by consensus. I am particularly interested in consensus as my friends and I have recently founded a new religious group, called Why This Way, which is run by consensus. But in this post, I want to write not about the co-op itself, but about its selection of tea bags:

This photo looks remarkably similar to a photo I took recently in a Whole Foods supermarket, and have yet to post, but hope to post in the near future.

The brands represented here include brands specializing in organic tea bags, such as Eden Organic, Choice Organic Teas, and Organic India, as well as mainstream tea bag brands, such as Twinings and Celestial Seasonings. Another brand, Traditional Medicinals, focusing on medicinal herbs, I find is a frequently-stocked product in co-ops and health food stores. Yogi Teas also has a good presence, and Good Earth's flagship tea also makes an appearance.

This store also sells bulk loose-leaf tea, something I'm quite excited about, and which I will cover in a future post. The bottom shelf, not pictured, did include two loose-leaf items: Ajiri Tea, a Kenyan black tea that I would highly recommend and that has favorable reviews on RateTea, and loose-leaf Yerba Mate from EcoTeas.

How do I feel about this tea bag selection?

To be honest, I am not excited by the selection here. The prices seem high to me, running from about $3.50 to $5.00 for a box of about 20 tea bags, with most brands centering around the 4.70-4.80 price range. That seems a lot to pay for a box of tea bags, especially when the same store sells bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, which are, in my opinion, considerably higher in quality, and which are much cheaper per cup.

I also feel a bit ambivalent about the "eco-friendly" brands of tea bags, like Eden Organics and Choice Organic Teas. I care a lot about sustainability. I think organic agriculture is a good idea, and, all other things being equal, I would not only prefer organic certified tea but may even pay a slight premium for it. But I also think that there are other issues to consider when considering environment impact.

These products are all highly packaged...boxed, most shrink-wrapped, and containing individually-packaged tea bags. Not all the packaging is biodegradable. A few of the products are fair-trade certified, but, as I explored in my recent guest post on Journey for Fair Trade about fair trade and the tea industry, the "value-added" processes like tea bag packaging results in profit that tends to be taken by Western countries, not a higher price paid to the original producers. And, also relating to the portion of profits going to producers vs. blenders and packers, few, if any, of these boxed products contain high-grade, whole-leaf tea.

It seems a little misguided to me that people are paying such a premium ($4.80 seems like a lot of money to me) for a box of tea bags with the idea that it is "eco-friendly" because it is organic certified, when the whole act of buying tea bags rather than loose-leaf tea has environmental and economic impacts that most of the people who value organic tea would consider negative. I almost wish the Co-op could just put a giant sign in front of all these products with an arrow pointing over to their bulk herbs and loose-leaf teas, saying: "BUY AND DRINK LOOSE-LEAF TEA, IT IS WAY BETTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!", and of course, selling some convenient tea infusers to make the loose tea easily accessible to newcomers.

How about you? What do you think?

Do you think I'm coming down a bit too hard here on the practice of buying and drinking tea bags? Or do you agree with my points here, that it would be warranted to have a more aggressive push towards drinking loose-leaf tea, among an audience of shoppers concerned about the environment?

Fair Trade and the Tea Industry on Journey for Fair Trade

I recently shared a guest post with the blog Journey for Fair Trade. Journey for Fair Trade is a blog, run by Mitch Teberg, focusing on fair trade. Mitch is currently working with the United Nations Development Program, and recently moved from Vietnam to Afghanistan.



One thing I really like about this blog is that Mitch Teberg is looking to promote fair trade, but he also examines the fair trade organizations with a critical eye, and looks to give as much of a voice as possible to the producers of the products which are imported to the U.S. and other Western countries with fair trade certification labels. The blog often goes into considerable depth about potential criticisms of fair trade, and in one case, even organized some activism surrounding a fabricated news article about fair trade producers and child labor. I also like the way the blog integrates discussion of other sustainability-related issues, as I think fair trade is not just about wages or working conditions, but is also about long-term health and environmental issues in the communities producing the goods imported to the Western world.

If you're interested in reading a blog that is focused on fair trade, and that addresses all types of producers, broader than just tea, and broader than just agriculture in general, you may find this blog very interesting. Updates are relatively infrequent, but posts are quite deep.

My guest post, specifically about tea:

You can find my post on the blog; it is titled Fair Trade and the Tea Industry.

The Importance of Context - Violinists in the Metro, and Tea Prices

One of my friends recently brought an interesting phenomenon to my attention. Back in 2007, a journalist for the Washington Post orchestrated an interesting social experiment in which the famous violinist Joshua Bell played a piece by J.S. Bach in a Washington D.C. Metro Station during rush hour.

There's a brief page on NPR and a radio program about it: A Concert Violinist on the Metro?. If you want to watch just the video, you can see it here:



This whole experiment is fascinating to me because of the huge disparity in how people receive and respond to this violinist in different contexts. People pay steep prices to buy a ticket to see this award-winning musician play, and concert halls fill up when he performs. Yet the same musician, playing the same music, is completely ignored by a vast majority of people.

How is this relevant to tea?

I think that this social experiment is actually directly relevant to the world of tea, in two ways, both in terms of the enjoyment of tea, and the choices people make when buying tea. The case of the famous concert violinist going mostly ignored in the subway reminds me a lot of how people are shelling out tons of money on expensive tea sold in high-end shopping malls, while missing bargain-buys such as the ones highlighted in my recent post on cheap tea. Why? Context.

Context in Buying and Enjoying Tea:

It is a well-known and well-studied phenomenon that people will (often baselessly) attribute higher quality to a product, including food and drink like tea and wine, if the product is more expensive. That's right, if the tea has a higher price tag, you will think it is more expensive. There are several factors going on here.



A psychology book, Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini, sheds some light on this phenomenon, citing multiple factors:

• Committment & Consistency - People are more likely to think that something is better if they gave up more to obtain it. In tea terms, people are more likely to think that a tea is higher quality if they spent more money on it, or went through greater lengths to obtain it (such as putting energy into searching for a bargain or researching online, or obtaining it from a little-known shop in an inconvenient location).


• Social Proof - Because prices often reflect market demand, people often assume that a more expensive tea is expensive because it is in high demand, and therefore, other people like it so it must be better.


• Scarcity - People are more likely to think a tea is better if it is scarce or difficult to obtain, such as if it is frequently out-of-stock, or only sold in limited batches. This is one reason why tea companies include weasel words like rare in their tea descriptions.

Beware of manipulation by marketing:

While there is some truth in all of these factors, unfortunately, all of these factors can be gamed or manipulated by unscrupulous tea companies looking to sell low-quality tea for a higher price. For example, people often assume that a higher price is related to scarcity or demand, but companies are free to set their own prices, so the price tag alone says nothing. And companies can also make teas seem artificially scarce by only ordering a small quantity and then having it go out of stock quickly.

For this reason I think it's good to be cautious. Some teas are genuinely rare or scarce, and some teas are more expensive because greater care has been put into their production. A few tips I would offer are to carry out blind taste tests (which can sometimes produce surprising results), and, when receiving teas as samples, to sample the tea and form your impression of it before looking at the tea's price. And, when buying tea online, shop around to see what the typical prices are for similar teas (or, in some cases, the same exact tea).

What do you think?

What do you think of the video / experiment with the violinist in the metro station? What about context as it applies to buying tea or enjoying tea? Do you have any additional tips for how to protect yourself against manipulation by marketing? How do you determine which teas really have the quality to justify their price?

Dollar Store Tea: Lindsay Gardens Tea

I like exploring dollar stores, although I often don't buy much in them because I tend to seek out high-quality merchandise and, as I explain below, sometimes buying low-quality "bargain-priced" merchandise can actually increase your costs in the long-run. But sometimes I do discover true bargains and I always enjoy searching for them. I recently discovered a store, Dollar Days, on 48th street in West Philadelphia, which has a fairly large selection of food products, and among them, tea. The following photograph shows the tea for sale in this store:



This tea was all from Lindsay Gardens Tea, a brand which I had never heard of before I saw it in this store and took this photograph. I did not buy this tea and I'm probably unlikely to try it unless someone else has already bought it and offers me a tea bag to try, because I don't like throwing out tea.

I love shopping for bargains, but I think it is important to think about the broader picture when considering price, rather than just buying things because they are cheap. The tea pictured above is a good example. While I can't say much about its quality without actually sampling it (and I have not done so), I'm skeptical about its quality. It's clearly a brand of low-end tea bags, and I tend to avoid these brands regardless of price, because I think that high-quality goods often offer better value. But even if this brand offered high-quality tea, would it really be the best price available?

Cost-per-cup Analysis:

The following analysis will clearly demonstrate the supremacy of loose-leaf tea over tea bags as a bargain buy. First of all, the price above, $1 for 20 tea bags, is exceptional. Except for buying very large packs (100+ teabags) in bulk, it's rare to find prices as low as the one above. But in loose-leaf teas the prices can go much lower.

I recently featured a handful of teas in a post cheap tea: loose-leaf teas offering outstanding value. Among these, the cheapest was Ahmad Tea's Kalami Assam, an unusually good Assam tea. This tea, which I bought one pound of for $6.15, costs between 3-4 cents per cup, assuming about 2.5 grams of tea per cup, a substantially more liberal quantity than most low-end tea bags contain. The Lindsay Gardens tea above, from the dollar store? Assuming one tea bag per cup, 5 cents a cup. The Ahmad tea is actually an example of a relatively high-quality tea. There are other teas that are still quite high-quality that are much cheaper even. As an example, take Turkish tea from Caykur, all of which is grown without pesticides. It tends to be smooth black tea, available at a fraction of the price of the Ahmad tea above.

Even if you are searching solely to minimize your cost-per-cup, you'll nearly always get a better deal buying cheap but good-quality loose-leaf tea than buying the cheapest tea bags on the market.

Lipton Tea - Brewing and Attitude Recommendations

This post is inspired by an interesting observation. I was reading Steven Knoerr's 39 Steeps, and in the post Drink Cheap Wine . . . and Tea? (which is a great post, by the way), I noticed something interesting.

The first is a positive remark Steven made about Lipton tea. The second is (gasp!) a positive comment *I* made about Lipton tea. Here is a humble bag of Lipton tea, to get you in the spirit of this post:



Picking on Lipton:

Often, I think Lipton gets a bad rap. Because it's the dominant brand, it is the default tea for connoisseurs to "pick on". Ironically though, picking on it by default may actually help this brand maintain its place as the dominant brand in the market...but that's another issue. I was picked on a lot as a kid, and it's not terribly pleasant or constructive, not something I would ever wish on anyone, so rather than doing the same to Lipton, I'll share my genuine opinion about what I really think about this tea.

What do we expect from Lipton?

I think tea is influenced a lot by how we perceive it, which is one of the key aspects that Steven gets at in his post above. If we order a whole-leaf oolong tea with a steep price tag on it, and it just tastes bad, where does our head go?

• Maybe I didn't brew it properly.


• Maybe the tea was not stored properly.


• Maybe I just don't know how to appreciate this particular tea or style of tea. (especially if the tea is an unfamiliar style that we do not regularly sample)


• Maybe this particular batch is no good.

But if we have the same experience drinking a cup of Lipton tea, our head usually goes to a different place:

• This tea is low-quality, mass-produced junk.

Is this justified? Objectively, we can look at Lipton and say: the tea bag contains finely broken leaf, fannings or dust. That means it's low grade. That means it's bad. But this logic does not hold.

Broken-leaf tea is not necessarily bad. For example, I tried a broken-leaf orthodox tea from Tanzania a while back, Upton Tea's TK18: Livingstonia Estate GFBOP, and one of my favorites was their now-discontinued Himalayan BOP Blend. These are not just "decent" or "passable" teas, these are teas I consider truly outstanding, and would gladly drink over any number of whole-leaf selections.

Lipton puts a great amount of care and resources into quality control, selecting teas and blending them to maintain a consistent quality of their tea as conditions change from season to season and year to year. Objectively, there's no reason to expect Lipton to necessarily be bad. And, if we do not enjoy it, it makes sense to at least ask whether or not we stored it properly, and brewed it so as to bring out the best in it.

My recommendations about Lipton:

If you are going to drink Lipton tea, treat it like any other tea:

• Make sure it's fresh and has been stored properly.


• Put some care into brewing it: make sure the water is boiling, heat your brewing vessel up so you're actually steeping the tea with boiling water, and carefully watch the steeping time (I recommend only 1 minute for a single cup).

My original comment on 39 Steeps was that I once gave this advice to one of my friends who was complaining about Lipton tea being bad. She told me after following the advice that she was very surprised, and that she really enjoyed the cup of tea. She told me that the resulting cup of tea was both less bitter and more flavorful than what had resulted when she had brewed the same tea haphazardly.

I want to make one final remark. I've tried a lot of teas, and Lipton's plain black tea is a lot better than a lot of teas out there. It's not the lowest of the low, nor is it really anywhere close. I've tried relatively pricey whole-leaf teas that I enjoyed much less, not to mention any number of other mainstream tea bags from the common brands in the supermarket, that I also think don't quite compare. Objectively, I think of Lipton as being somewhere in the middle in terms of quality, which is pretty impressive given its price scale of production.

What do you think?

Do you bash Lipton, or use it as an example of low-quality tea? Or do you enjoy it, and think it's actually pretty decent quality? Have you ever drunk Lipton, or any other mainstream, inexpensive, mass-produced teas, while putting care into properly storing them and preparing them, as you would expensive loose-leaf tea? What were your results?

You can read and share reviews of Lipton's Black Tea on RateTea if you are curious what others think, or want to chime in for yourself.

The Best Teas: Is It Just About The Caffeine?

People who consider themselves tea connoisseurs, or perhaps even just tea enthusiasts, would usually like to believe that they have "discerning tastes", that they appreciate the "finer things in life", and specifically, the finer nuances of flavor and aroma when drinking a cup of tea.

Pictured here is some kukicha, one of my favorite styles of green tea, and one which demonstrates the spirit of this post: kukicha, tending to be low in caffeine, is not a usual focal point of connoisseurs:



This post is about a wrench thrown into the idea that we really have discerning tastes...the wrench is the observation that, at least to a large degree, people seem to seek out teas that are higher in caffeine. Not, mind you, teas they think are higher in caffeine, but teas that actually are higher in caffeine. (Which are two different things, unfortunately, due to the prevalance of misinformation in our society.)

But first I want to digress into the realm of beer and alcohol content, which offers a fascinating analogy of this same phenomenon:

Beer and Alcohol:

I was involved in rating and reviewing beer long before I got involved in rating and reviewing tea. In fact, RateBeer.com, where you can find my profile if you're curious of my tastes in beer, was one of the major sources of inspiration for RateTea.

When I first started using RateBeer, I was so excited about the concept. I loved craft brews, and unlike most people in my age bracket, I had little interest in getting drunk. I saw my use of RateBeer and my passion for craft beers produced by local microbreweries as a rebellion against the dominant drinking culture in our society, which ignores taste and focuses on getting drunk as quickly as possible.

Something raises an eyebrow: Alcohol content and ratings:

After having used RateBeer for years, and drinking, rating, and reviewing hundreds of beers, I started noticing something. Beers with a higher alcohol content invariably received a higher rating on the site. I also noticed this same trend off the site, among people who considered themselves beer enthusiasts or connoisseurs...a large number of them tended towards the Belgian ales and barley wines, with their very high alcohol contents. These brews struck me as more like wine than beer. Personally, I like beer better than wine, and I think this preference is in part because of the lower alcohol content of beer.

As an example, my favorite beer, the Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, with 5.8% ABV (Alcohol by volume) scores a 3.87 with 1223 ratings. The Great Lakes Blackout Stout, a beer that I think is good, but not anywhere near as good, but which has 9% ABV, gets 3.93 (this subtle distinction in score is actually bigger than you might think on the site). Another example, from my hometown, is how Lancaster Brewing Co's Amish Four Grain, with 5.6% ABV is rated much lower than the same brewery's Winter Warmer, 9% ABV. Personally, I think the four-grain is a much better beer.

Back to tea:

I've unfortunately noticed a similar trend among teas, albeit with caffeine in place of alcohol. For example, among white teas, silver needle has more caffeine than bai mu dan, which has more caffeine than shou mei. Guess which ones tend to be more expensive and are often written about by "connoisseurs" as being somehow "better"? Another example...sencha vs. bancha. Another example: tippy black teas (whether Assam, Yunnan, or whatever) vs. their non-tippy counterparts.

Although there's certainly a huge amount of variability, the teas with more caffeine tend to be more expensive, seem to be preferred by people "in the know", and receive better reviews.

Possible confounding factors:

There are other factors that could be contributing to these trends. Some confounding factors that I've thought of are that:

• Tippy teas (more tips / young leaves, less mature leaves) contain more caffeine, and also have a more smooth or delicate flavor, and people may prefer the smoothness or other qualities, so the association with caffeine is accidental.


• Tippy teas are more expensive, and people may be buying into the psychological fallacy that more expensive means better quality.


• Because tippy teas are more expensive, they're more actively pushed by tea companies because of the higher profit margin, and we tea drinkers are simply fooled by their marketing into thinking they're really higher quality.

And of course, it also might be true that people don't actually prefer these teas, that there's just an illusion that they do, again, probably because of tea company marketing (unlike the world of beer, where there is hard data suggesting that people really do prefer the beers with a higher alcohol content).

What do you think?

Do you think that the caffeine content of a tea influences how much people like it, and that people tend to prefer teas with more caffeine because of the caffeine? Or do you think that it could be explained by confounding factors? Or do you think they really don't like these teas at all and it's just an impression caused by tea company marketing?

Cheap Tea: Loose-leaf Teas Offering Outstanding Value

I'm a bargain shopper, and a highly cost-conscious person in nearly all aspects of my life. I believe in spending money wisely. This post is about loose-leaf teas that are really cheap. This is not the first time I've written on this topic: back in April of 2010 I wrote about three unusually good inexpensive teas...but that was a long time ago, and I've discovered more deals since then.

The word "cheap" often has a negative connotation..."cheaply made", or "cheap quality". That's not what I'm getting at. By cheap, I mean that the price is really low, lower than you can typically get in tea bags. The teas in this post are not just inexpensive, they're outright cheap, bargain buys. But they're also remarkably high-quality. They offer, in my opinion, outstanding value...the best you can get for your money.

Ahmad Tea's Kalami Assam:

Pictured here is the loose-leaf of Ahmad Tea's Kalami Assam:



Price: $6.15 a pound. Wow, just wow.
Summary: A strong Assam black tea with remarkable complexity.
My full review.

Tradition's Oolongs: A-Li-Son (Alishan) and Dong Ding:

Picture here is a tin of Tradition's A-Li-Son (Alishan) oolong, with the loose-leaf brewing in a glass mug. This tea is a little pricier relative to the others, but it is a whole-leaf green oolong tea, with mostly unbroken leaves, and it's still really cheap:



Price: $7.95 for 100 grams.
Summary: Two offerings: A-Li-Son (pictured), and Dong Ding. Both are intensely aromatic, greener, high-mountain oolong from Taiwan. Unparalleled quality for this price.
My review of Tradition's A-Li-Son Oolong, and My review of Tradition's Dong Ding Oolong.

Starway's Green Teas: Huangshan Mao Feng and Bilouchun (Bi Luo Chun):

This brand is a relative newcomer (at least to my eye) in Asian markets, but is now widely available. I'm less impressed with their oolongs, but these two green teas offer amazing deals:



Price: $2.95 and $3.95 for 6 ounces (170 grams).
Summary: Two single-region Chinese green teas of unparalleled quality for this price. The cheaper of the two is in the mao feng style, the other is a surprisingly passable bi luo chun.

My review of the bi luo chun, and My review of the huangshan mao feng.

Have you tried any of these teas? And have you found any deals lately?

Let me know! Share your insights into teas that are both cheap and good!

Ideal Tea Sample Sizes: How Small, How Large?

This post explores the question of what the ideal sample size is to offer to a customer. Hopefully, it will be useful both to potential shoppers as well as to tea companies.

Pictured here are some different samples I have received recently:



Some samples also arrive in tins, although these are not pictured. In a later post I plan to talk more about the type of containers used for samples, but for now, I want to focus on one thing: the size of the sample. It is evident from the picture above that there is a fair difference in size of different samples. Keep in mind, the size difference can be even larger than the picture suggests, because different amounts of leaf occupy different amounts of space. The brown package contains a tiny amount of loosely-packed oolong, whereas the tiny vacuum pack in the back (which weighs much more) contains a much larger amount of tightly-rolled oolong.

Why are samples useful?

If you are a business, the value of offering samples is immense. In case it's not glaringly obvious, offering small sample sizes of each of your teas is a way to help your customers to discover which teas they like, while minimizing the risk of the customer making big purchases that they are unhappy with. The last thing you want is a customer to sink a large amount of money into a purchase that they find out that they do not enjoy. If, on the other hand, the customer purchases several samples and does not like one of them, the loss is relatively small, and the customer has gained useful information.

What is an ideal sample size?

In my opinion, the ideal sample size is small enough that there is not much waste if the customer does not like the tea and large enough to try the tea several times and experiment with brewing.

I have seen sample sizes ranging from 2 grams to 1 ounce (a little over 28 grams). 2 grams is, in my opinion, much too small, as it is only enough to brew a single cup of tea, Western-style. Such a small sample size does not allow for repeated sampling and thus does not allow for any experimentation with brewing. Gong fu brewing, of course, is out of the question.

28 grams, on the other hand, is too big. Fortunately, I have lucked out in my purchases, and all 1-ounce samples I have ordered have been quite enjoyable to me. Sometimes it can take me time to acquire a taste for a tea, but in most cases, if I've brewed a tea three or more times, over a week or more, and I still fail to appreciate it, I probably am not going to like it at all, and the remainder of the sample is wasted unless I can find someone else who likes it.

I think 15 grams, or a little over half an ounce, is a sweet spot for me, in terms of sample size. This allows for 6 or more Western-style brewings, or for 1-2 Gong Fu brewings, with leaf left over if only done once. Being able to experiment with different styles of brewing helps me to really understand the tea.

Sample Pricing:

The size of tea samples is closely related to pricing. For inexpensive teas, especially with smaller samples, the cost of packing and labelling the sample is probably going to be larger than the cost of the tea itself.

For pricey teas and larger samples, the cost of the tea becomes significant. This phenomenon is very clearly evident in the catalog of Upton Tea Imports, which has a minimum sample size of $1 for 15 grams, and many teas with this price point, but also many teas which go much higher, including for smaller samples (the priciest I've seen from them was $8 for 2 grams).

My recommendation to companies is to price your samples as low as you can without losing money or undercutting the price of the next-largest quantity after the sample. Why? Samples are a great way to bring in new customers, and they prevent existing customers from ending up with teas they are not happy with. You might say: "But what about people who just like sampling teas...like you, Alex? Won't they put us out of business?" First of all, I said as low as you can without losing money. But I also want to point out that the people, like me, who order obscene numbers of samples and then never order those teas again, are the people who really think about tea. I may never re-order the vast majority of teas I sample, but I write about each one of them online, and often talk about them with my friends. By catering to the sampling crowd, you get free advertisement.

What do you think?

If you are a tea drinker, what is your ideal sample size when you are looking to try new teas? How often do you order samples, and how big a factor is sample size in choosing whether or not to buy from a company?

And if you work for or own a tea company, how do you determine the sample size to offer? And how do you set the price?

Yunnan Gold: More Expensive. Better?

This weekend I attended World Tea East, and it was wonderful. I hope to write more about this event soon, but for now, I've been catching up on more routine tasks, including reading blog posts that I was behind on well before attending the expo.

One recent blog post that struck me as notable was Lahikmajoe's post you pay more for appearance. If you haven't yet read this, I recommend at least glancing at it, as it will make this post make more sense. This post talks about the appearance of tippy Assam teas. A comment on the post then brings up Yunnan Gold or Golden Yunnan teas, a tippy type of Dian Hong or Yunnan Red, the style of black tea produced in China's Yunnan Province. In the spirit of this subject, and in case you don't know where Yunnan province is, here is a map of China with the province colored in a rich golden color:



When I first started sampling and researching Yunnan teas, I was under the impression that all tips were golden in black teas, and that the golden color corresponded in a fairly straightforward way to the portion of buds. According to the post above and the conversation it references, this correspondence is not so simple. I had seen tippy Assam with golden tips as well, and I had read that the Yunnan Pure Gold teas were made exclusively of tips. But if you are a Yunnan enthusiast, as I am becoming (the more of these teas I try, the more this becomes one of my favorite styles), or if you are experienced with trying a wide range of tippy black teas, you will likely know from experience that the golden color does not always correspond perfectly to the portion of tips, nor to the character or quality of the tea.

But it does seem to correspond fairly well to price, which begs the question:

Does Golden = Better?

I was curious to see if I had been roped into the idea of golden = better, so I looked back to my recent ratings and reviews on RateTea to find some Yunnan Gold teas that I had tried recently. The three teas I most recently sampled, starting with the most recent, were Adagio's Yunnan Gold, Life in Teacup's Yunnan Golden Bud, and Rishi Tea's Golden Yunnan. These links will take you to my reviews.

Keep in mind, these companies also sell other Yunnan teas (Rishi has a less golden and more golden one), so I'm not necessarily comparing teas of similar grades. But that's the point. These three teas are pictured from left to right, Adagio's, then Life in Teacup's, then Rishi's:



These photos were not taken side-by-side. Although the lighting and composition of these photographs is obviously different, and it's hard to get an exact comparison of the way the leaf looked, I will say that having seen all of these teas up-close, Rishi's looks the least golden of them, as the picture suggests, and the other two teas are similar in color and appearance.

Interestingly, Rishi's got the highest rating from me. The other two I gave identical ratings. In my review, I noted when trying Adagio's that I think I prefer the darker teas somewhat.

How do they compare by price?

Rishi's is $4.00 an ounce, or $14.75 a quarter pound. Adagio's is 1.5 ounces for $12. Life in Teacup's is $7.99 an ounce. It looks pretty clear...golden is more expensive. And at least from my limited sample size, I do not necessarily prefer the golden color, and at this point, I do not think it is worth paying for. This impression may change as I sample more teas and/or as my palate develops, but for now, I'm thinking it's at least possible that this golden color is more for show than anything else, and does not adequately reflect higher quality as manifested in the flavor and aroma of the brewed tea.

What do you think? I'd be curious to hear your opinions and experiences on this matter.

Price and Sustainability: What is Overpriced Tea?

One of the recent blog posts that I greatly appreciated was Lainie's post about The Price of Tea, which references a great post on the Tea Geek Blog, Whose Tea Is That?, discussing how different companies will sell the same batches of tea (often for different prices). Price is one of my favorite topics, and I think I would like to write about it more than I do, so here goes:



I also think that in the end, being price-conscious as a shopper, not just for tea, but for everything, is crucial to achieving sustainability. Our financial decisions, which include all purchases, shape the organization of labor and distribution of resources in society. When we buy goods for a fair price, we are participating in a normal, healthy economic activity. When we buy undervalued goods, we are often helping to dispose of excess goods or helping a company to regain losses if they have an overabundance of something. But when we buy overpriced goods, we are giving money (and thus power) to someone who has not provided a proportional amount of value. Buying overpriced goods thus is bad for the economy as a whole--that is my philosophy, which I know does not agree with some economists' theories. Economists who would argue otherwise probably argue that consumerism is a good thing, and spending money for the sake of spending it is somehow desirable. Who believes in that? I sure don't.

What is overpriced?

The notion of something being overpriced is necessarily subjective. There are different ways of looking at price and value, and I will outline two of them. In either way, however, the core idea is value. It does not matter so much what the price of something is. For example, with tea you might examine price per ounce, per pound, per tea bag, or even per cup. However, these prices are distinct from value, which is the more subtle and elusive concept of what you're getting for your money.

It's often worth paying more money if the product is better tasting. You might even save money if you are able to make more infusions from a set of tea leaves, or get by with using less tea leaf because the tea is so intensely flavorful.

Value as assessing the quality of good itself:

Arguably the most important aspect, or at least most immediately evident aspect of value is the quality of the good itself. In the case of tea, the quality encompasses the flavor, aroma, and to some degree, appearance and ease of brewing of the tea leaf.

However, value does not exist in a vacuum, and there are other things besides the innate qualities of the good, and its price, which influence value.

Value as relative:

If tea were a very scarce commodity, it would probably command a high price. On the other hand, if it were easy to grow and process in a temperate climate, like mint, it would probably not be as expensive in countries like the U.S. or U.K. Value also depends on possible substitute goods.

The value of a specific type or batch of tea is also dependent on the price and value of similar teas. If you can buy an identical or nearly indistinguishable tea from a different company, you will probably see the higher-priced of the two offerings as overpriced. And if you can buy a similar, but slightly different tea for a much lower price, you are also likely to see the one tea as overpriced as well. For example, the existence of inexpensive but high-quality se chung oolongs often makes me a little pickier about the quality of Tie Guan Yin, and more likely to perceive Tie Guan Yin as overpriced unless it is absolutely top-notch.

Value as holistic economic concept:

There is one more way to look at value, and that is to look at the whole supply chain from the tea growers and harvesters through all intermediate parties to the sale, purchase, and brewed cup. In this paradigm, the value depends not only on the quality of the good itself, and possible substitute goods, but also on the amount of profit taken out of various points in the supply chain, and the effect that the production of the product has on the various communities, people, and businesses along the way.

This way of thinking about value is relatively new, in part because in the past, most if not all of this information was hidden from people buying tea. But with the information age, there is greater transparency, and this holistic view of value is becoming much more popular and widespread, and I actually believe it will eventually become widely accepted in the mainstream. It is this holistic view of value that is the underpinning of the philosophy of fair trade.

The teas that one might classify as "overpriced" can differ hugely if one uses this holistic sense of value, vs. if one uses the conventional sense of value. For example, one might be comfortable paying a modest premium for a tea produced by sustainable methods by a small farmer-owned cooperative. On the other hand, one might be more likely to label a tea as overpriced if one knew that it had a high markup at the point of sale, with only a negligible portion of the sales price reaching the original producers.

What does overpriced mean to you?

How do you personally think about value, when it comes to tea? Do you look at the quality of the tea alone, or do you consider where the tea came from, and the markup involved at various steps of the sale and distribution of the tea?

Ten of China's Underappreciated Teas

Inspired by a recent post on the Life in Teacup blog, China's Famous Teas Top 10 - Money and Power?, I decided to create my own Top 10 Chinese teas list. There are lots of different "China Famous Teas" (中国名茶) or "Ten Great Chinese Teas" (中国十大名茶) lists floating around out there...interesting analysis on Wikipedia of which teas appear on how many of these lists, by the way.

But this is a different sort of Top 10...most of these teas would not make it onto any of these lists. This is a list of everyday teas for everyday people...including many inexpensive teas, some considered as "low-grade" teas. And yet, in my opinion, all these teas offer exceptional value and are often surprisingly high in quality relative to their price, especially if you can locate the right source / vendor. This list is rather arbitrary...I may wake up tomorrow and realize I omitted an important tea, or I may discover a new tea in a few weeks that belongs here...but I just wanted to get this post out there:

1. Shou Mei (寿眉) - meaning "Longevity Eyebrows", this is often considered a "low" or inexpensive grade of white tea. It is dark in flavor and more oolong-like. It is my personal favorite style of white tea.


2. Chun Mee (珍眉) - meaning "Precious Eyebrows". The highest grade of young hyson tea, this is nonetheless an inexpensive green tea. It has a tangy flavor which, while undesired by some, is much appreciated by others.


3. Gunpowder Tea (珠茶) - A green tea rolled tightly into small pellets, with a strong smoky quality. Although it ranges widely in price, there are good gunpowder teas that are available for an incredibly low price. To give you an idea of how low, I once bought some very good gunpowder in NYC's Chinatown for $7/pound. The top grades of gunpowder are still very affordable.


4. Se Chung (色种) Oolong - Often overshadowed by Tie Guan Yin, Se Chung is not one particular variety, but rather, a family of oolongs from Anxi county, where Tie Guan Yin also originated. The Se Chung oolongs include Huang Jin Gui, Mao Xie, Benshan, and Qilan, among others. Many of them offer outstanding value. I was almost tempted to break this category up and list more of the individual varieties of se chung oolongs, but I only did this for one.


5. Qi lan(奇兰) Oolong - One of the Se Chung oolongs, I broke this one out into its own category because it seems most different from the others and also most distinct from other oolongs, and also because it a varietal grown both in Anxi and the Wuyi mountains. Dark, heavily oxidized forms of this oolong, from Wuyi, are very sweet and mild, fruity, floral, nutty. The greener forms, more common in Anxi, are orchid-like in fragrance, but with their own distinct twist, rather unlike Tie Guan Yin. Something about this varietal is atypical for me in that I tend to like bitter teas and dislike sweet ones, but I enjoy this one greatly. I also find that among the se chung varietals, this one tends to offer one of the most intense floral experiences for a one of the most reasonable prices.


6. Young Sheng (Green or "raw") Pu-Erh - While aged pu-erh often fetches a high price, young sheng pu-erh tends to be very inexpensive. If you like strong teas, you might actually prefer the younger cakes of sheng pu-erh to aged ones--they have considerably more bitterness (which I like very much) and can be astonishingly complex in aroma relative to their price.


7. Lapsang Souchong (拉普山小種) - This black tea is dried over pine fires; the pine smoke imparts a strong and unique smoky aroma, whereas the tea itself is mellow in flavor. People tend to have strong opinions on this one; a favorite of many, others avoid it like the plague.


8. Keemun (祁门) - While Keemun can reach into the most expensive and highly regarded teas, especially Keemun Hao Ya and Keemun Mao Feng, and Keemun actually makes some of the lists of China Famous Teas, there are nevertheless many outstanding Keemuns available for reasonable prices. I added Keemun to this list because I think the Keemuns that do not bear the Hao Ya and Mao Feng labels often are dismissed as inferior quality, and to some degree, Keemuns from Hubei (rather than Anhui, the true origin of Keemuns) are also sometimes dismissed...but Keemuns are incredibly diverse and I think many of the lower-priced ones are outstanding teas, worthy of more attention and appreciation.


9. Jasmine Tea - Not a pure tea, but with a long history, this tea is usually made from a pouchong / baozhong base tea scented with Jasmine flowers...often described as perfumey, this is another love-it-or-leave-it tea.


10. Rose-scented Tea - I initially resisted including a second scented tea in this list, but I think China's traditionally-scented floral teas are really outstanding, and, for the most part, put western flavored and blended teas to shame. Both green and black teas are frequently scented with rose, and the result is highly floral, but can hardly be said to resemble Jasmine tea at all. Rose is a powerful, surprisingly sharp aroma, holding its own with (and often dominating) even strong black teas. It also blends well with the floral element in some of the higher-quality black teas.

I would encourage other people to make up their own "Top 10" lists. Gingko of Life in Teacup pointed out that there is a (potentially ugly) money and power side to the official top 10 lists. By taking things into our own hands and creating our own lists, especially when we do our best to draw attention to under-appreciated teas, we help combat the forces of entrenched interests, and encourage diversity in the world of tea.

Three Unusually Good Inexpensive Teas

In the world of high-quality loose tea, it's often true that you get what you pay for. I've often tasted several grades of the same tea and noticed the increasing complexity corresponding to appropriate increasing price--and it's also important to mention that many of the higher-priced teas lack unpleasant characteristics present in their cheaper counterparts.

But it's also true that there are deals out there. Today I'll share three teas that I personally think are unusually high in quality relative to how inexpensive they are. If you're price-sensitive but still want to try something really good, I'd recommend checking out these offerings.

Upton Tea Import's Se Chung Oolong:

Se Chung was a bit of an enigma to me; it has been tricky to figure out exactly what it was, and I'd still like to find more reliable sources to back up the page I wrote on Se Chung. (Thanks to the many forum participants who informed this article.) From trying a few se chungs, they can be quite diverse. This particular one is a greener oolong, strong and bold in flavor, complex in aroma, and the leaves can be infused many times. I like this far better than any Tie Guan Yin I've tried in a similar (or considerably higher) price range. Detailed review of Upton's Se Chung. At $4.90 for 100g, this tea is an absolute steal.

Hampstead Tea's Darjeeling (from Makaibari Estate):

This is a lighter, gentle Darjeeling, not a first-flush but with a noticeable first-flush character. It's also fair trade and organic certified--and beyond this, it's a biodynamic plantation (which includes in this case the fact that most of the area of the estate is left as wild forest). But even setting these things aside, I think this tea competes with considerably more expensive teas on its flavor and aroma alone. The aroma is very pleasing and has a lot of things going on. Detailed review. I'm not sure if it has an official price but I've seen it for sale in stores and online retailers for as low as $4 for a 125g canister; typical price is closer to $8 but it's still a great deal.

Ten Ren's Pouchong 3rd Grade:

This is by no means a top-notch Pouchong / Bao Zhong. It has a number of subtle qualities that connoisseurs and everyday tea-drinkers alike will most likely object to--a fishy quality, a certain harshness. But it's hard to find inexpensive pouchongs, and this one is the only one I've found in this price range that's worth trying. It has a honey-like sweetness, a floral quality, and yet has a pleasant bite to it, and I find it quite enjoyable to drink. Detailed review. 4oz. for $7.00; I actually bought it in Chicago for less than this in the Ten Ren store but the prices may have gone up since then.

Always looking for more ideas!

I'm always looking for more teas that people think are an exceptionally good deal, so if you have anything you know of, please let me know!

Private Label Teas

The idea of a private label tea sounds reasonable: a company sells tea that can be packaged and given a brand name of its own. It makes a lot of sense for restaurants, hotels, spa's, and any other businesses that wish to sell their own brand of tea, but either aren't knowledgeable enough in the tea market to source directly, or simply don't want to take on this added responsibility.

However, there is an ugly side to the phenomenon of private label teas.

The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal has an excellent article on this subject, by Randy Altman, titled "The Secret and Lucrative Private Label Tea Market" (from 2007, the article is now not viewable on the original journal's site but can be read on The Free Library). The private label business is a secretive one, especially when the source company also sells directly to individuals: any company selling such private label tea needs to hide the source of their tea, for if the customer found out, they could purchase the tea directly from the source. The customer might also feel cheated, especially if the markup were too high, and this could harm the company's loyalty--including in areas beyond their sales of tea (which might not be a main source of revenue).

Many providers of private label tea solve this problem by only selling wholesale. However, the markup is still high--it's just now even more effectively hidden from the customer. Nothing has changed; it's only harder for the prices and markup to be spotted.

Economic justice?

In addition to the question of a fair price for tea drinkers, there is a very ugly economic justice aspect to private label tea: the extra profit generated by the markup in this extra step is pocketed solely by the companies buying and selling the private label tea--it typically does not "trickle down" to the original producers. SOMO's 2008 report, Sustainability Issues in the Tea Sector, identifies as one of the major sustainability issues facing the tea industry the fact that producers earn such a tiny share of the profits from tea, whereas the company engaging in the last step, selling to the customer (in this case the company selling their own private label) earns the lion's share of the profits. In a sense, it's the opposite of the goal/principles of fair trade, which boils down to the idea of cutting out middlemen and ensuring that the price paid by the end customer reflects a fair living wage paid to the original producer.

By buying private label tea, you're effectively making the rich richer and keeping the poor poor.

What can be done about this?

Fortunately, there are easy solutions to these problems! Buying from companies that source directly (like Yunnan Sourcing or ) not only gets you a better price--you're getting the full value of what you pay for instead of just lining someone's pocket's--but, especially when you buy fair trade tea and/or tea sourced directly from small farmers (especially from farmer-owned companies like Obubu Tea), you're empowering the producers. Many companies, like Rishi Tea, take a multifaceted approach, working with fair trade and organic certification, and engaging in other sustainability-promoting initiatives. Equal Exchange also goes above and beyond the standard fair trade certification to work for economic justice. And Shanti Tea not only works with fair trade and organic producers, but is committed to biodynamic agriculture as well.

These are only a few of the many companies out there and many more are doing similar things; apologies to any I have omitted! Ultimately, these approaches result in a better quality product. Empowered producers have the resources for both preserving and developing new local tea cultivars, varieties, and traditions.

So what to do?

I would hardly suggest boycotting companies that sell private label tea...their ranks include Harney & Sons, SpecialTeas, and a number of other companies that sell directly to the consumer. But a good solution is to buy directly from these companies, rather than buying from companies reselling their teas for a higher price. Also, knowing the market can help you make wise purchasing decisions. As Marlena of Tea for Today pointed out in the comments, in some circumstances private label tea can actually be priced below the prices offered by a supplier, and this can represent a great opportunity. It's always important to be price conscious when shopping for tea--but it's also important to know how the company you are buying from sources their teas. If you're going to pay a premium, make sure you're paying for quality, and make sure that money is going to be put towards ensuring future generations will be able to enjoy diversity and quality of tea, rather than just allowing your money to go towards lining someone's pockets.

Expensive Tea is Inexpensive

I've always been a believer in focusing on value rather than price--it's one of the reasons I selected "value" as a rating category on RateTea.

What is an expensive tea? My favorite tea company, Upton Tea Imports, lists the priciest tea in their catalog: Top Competition Tie-Guan-Yin 2g (enough for a single cup) for $6.00. This is expensive tea. Tea does get more expensive than this, but this one is definitely up there. Teas of all styles are widely variable in price, but some of the priciest teas tend to be vintage pu-erh, yellow teas, Taiwanese oolongs, Japanese Gyokuro, and certain single-estate Darjeeling and Assam teas.

$6.00 per cup is really not all that expensive. It's common in the U.S. for people to drop $8 or more at a bar on a mixed drink.

Multiple Infusions & Cost per Cup:

Multiple infusions (brewing multiple cups of tea from the same set of leaves) are central to gong fu brewing, but even when brewing a cup or pot of tea in a more basic western style, the better teas tend to be usable for more than one infusion. This tends to be especially true of whole-leaf and large-leaf teas and compressed teas like pu-erh, as the rate of diffusion through the leaf is lower, and there is still a lot of flavor and aroma left in the leaf after making a cup or two.

When you consider how many times it's possible to brew a tea, the price changes dramatically. If you were even able to brew two cups from those 2 grams of tea above, it's now $3 / cup...and with three cups it's $2/cup. This is starting to sound pretty reasonable, especially since you can easily pay more for that when buying tea in a tea house or coffee shop. And that tea would just be for a special treat. You can get outstanding teas for far less than $6 / 2g.

So the conclusion is: if you're going to buy the best of the best in some aspect of your life, you might as well pick tea. It's the least likely to break the bank!