Space Cowboy > wrote:
>I like TenRen loose teas. AFAIK their commercial loose teas aren't for
>export. Their export teabags don't compare. I recently paid $7/150g
>for bags of Green and TungTing. Another very good commercial brand
>from Taiwan is Good Young. Again buy their loose teas and not teabags.
> I've never had a bad Pouchong from Taiwan from anybody. So to wrap
>it up, I like commercial loose teas from Taiwan.

Most of the teabags of theirs I have tried were very stale, even ones
purchased at the Ten Ren stores.

The Ten Ren stores have a wide variety of loose teas, although for the
most part the more expensive ones and the oddities aren't stocked very
conistently. For example, the NYC store has lapsang souchong, which
the Rockville store does not... but Rockville has two grades of the
Oriental Beauty tea while the NYC store has only one.

Ten Ren usually has five or six grades of each variety, but the stores
don't stock all of them. For the most part, they get more fragrant as
you go up in price. The cheap teas are very inexpensive, and the high
end teas are very expensive although many of the stores only stock the
stuff in the middle.

The second-to-lowest grade tung ting is pretty good, and reasonably
priced. I love the oriental beauty teas. The king's tea and the
lapsang are both kind of nasty.

Oh yes, and their osmanthus teas are interesting. As you go up in
price, the teas have less osmanthus and more tea flavour.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."