On Mar 4, 3:00 am, Will Yardley >
wrote:
> 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

Hey thanks for the reply I hadn't been aware of Franchia before at
all. I actually wasn't the one who was interested in the tea ceremony
stuff, that had been a student looking for info. I'm more interested
in Korean tea itself. Shan Shui offers some Korean teas: http://www.shanshuiteas.com
and the prices seem consistent or even higher there than Franchia. I
know there has been a vendor site I came across a month or so back
that was totally dedicated to Korean tea but I didn't bookmark it and
can't find it again.

Without specific info I'd approach Korean teas like any other and
figure that the second and third picks are probably the best while the
expensive first pick is more valued for rarity and subtlety than
taste. I do understand it is fairly rare stuff so I fully expect to
pay for it, but just as with a number of FF DJs it simply isn't worth
it sometimes. I'll give them all a shot, but I'd be surprised if my
assumption is wrong.

All of my Korean markets and friends tend to go for the Japanese
greens as well, but as I had made reference to they are very big on
little packets of instant granule "tea" which is either Ginger,
Ginseng, or Chrysanthemum based with sweetener in little pellets. I
can tolerate it but it is not pleasurable to me at all. The other big
option I see is the jujube (date) tea which they seem to love as well.

- Dominic