On 2008-03-04, Dominic T. > wrote:

> Finally, what vendors are reputable and well stocked in these teas? I
> have seen a few sites with Korean tea sections but they almost seem to
> be an after thought.

Franchia! In NYC - tea shop and cafe branch of Hangawi restaurant (vegan
Korean place). Expensive, but great wild green Korean green tea, Korean
teaware, and a lot of (free) information on their site about brewing tea
Korean style.

http://franchia.com/

Their first and second picked teas are very delicate... a lot of people
probably would actually prefer the third picked. The prices on their
site are for 3 oz, not the weight listed, which I believe is the
shipping weight. In the US, there aren't a lot of other vendors selling
this stuff, so it's hard to get a frame of reference for how overpriced
their tea is. I suspect it is a little overpriced, just because the
place itself is pretty frou-frou, but the tea is (IMHO) excellent, and
I'm generally not a big green tea person. I guess closest comparison to
something else I've had would be a really delicate long jing, but
earthier and sweeter.

I imagine if you give them a call and manage to reach them when they're
not busy, they might be able to give you some more background on Korean
tea ceremony.

Surprisingly, I haven't seen that much interesting Korean tea stuff in
LA (surprising because LA has such a huge Korean population). There is
one tea & coffee shop, which I haven't checked out yet. Most of the
Korean markets here (not that they'd have the greatest tea) stock
typical Japanese teas like Genmaicha etc.

w