Tea from Non Traditional Tea Producing Countries

You can find all three of the countries you mentioned here:

I've tried some of their teas from Georgia, which are quite good.

/Lew

Buy any Indonesian tea that contains the word Java. Youll have to find a tea shoppe that carries a selection. In the Asian stores look for the Vietnamese tea packaging Thai Nguyen Tra. This is the unscented green tea from Thai Nguyen province. The Asian brand YamoMotoYama tea plantations are in of all places Brazil. Kenya is another large exporter of teas.

Jim

Yes, Thai Nguyen green can be delicious: fresh and sweet, somewhere between Chinese and Japanese greens in its profile.

/Lew

I had a wonderful silver needle from Malawi. I also had a very interesting (good or not depends on the palette, some folks hated it, I liked it) from Kenya.

There are a couple Vietnamese teas available from Upton's, which are pleasant but undistinguished, and I have seen some random Vietnamese teas (mostly scented but some unscented) at the Vietnamese markets in Northern VA.

Don't know about anything from Indonesia, but the Boh teas website will allow you to order online, and I cannot say enough good things about their Palas Afternoon tea. Even their cheap bulk tea is pretty good.

Don't know about Bolivia at all. There is a huge amount of tea being grown in Argentina, but most of it is pretty dreadful.

And of course there is Georgia.... do a search on this newsgroup for the url for Caucasus Arts. I really like their teas although I wound up having to send five-pound notes in the mail to their fellow in the UK because they had no US distribution.

--scott