Has anyone ordered from here? Value of competitions?

They seem to have some of their facts mixed up (like saying that rou gui is "from An Xi in Fu Jian in the Wu Yi mountain area"* -- and is that picture showing a rolled tea?? --, and categorizing Tie Guan Yins separately from either green or roasted oolongs). It's odd that they say the best oolong harvests in Taiwan are winter and spring - I thought that for most teas which are harvested more than once a year, fall and spring were considered the best harvests for almost any type of tea in either mainland China or Taiwan.

Some of the prices seem high; others seem reasonable, but it's really hard to say without trying the tea. It definitely looks like he's better connected in Taiwan, so I'm guessing most of the mainland teas have come through Taiwan. You'll probably have a better bet getting Taiwanese teas from him than Chinese teas.

He seems a little cocky (he's quoted as saying he has the "best tea in the world, here in Eugene.")**, but at least he's enthusiastic, and trying to develop a market for good tea in the US - and I know from watching other people try to make a living from this that it's a hard way to go.

I am curious to see a tea shop like this in Eugene -- I have a friend who lives there, so when I visit, I'll try to scope it out in person. And definitely post to the group if you try out his stuff.

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I'm not sold at all. I looked into the site and while the intention may be good it just falls flat big time. Best of luck to him, and if it scratches a particular itch for you then go for it... otherwise much better tea at much better prices can be found.

- Dominic

I visited Josh at his retail shop in Eugene this week. Even though Eugene is a small town, he has a good business going there with people stopping in to chat, have a cup of tea, buy tea leaf, etc. Maybe it's all the hippies, maybe it's the water, or maybe it's the cold / rainy weather, but the Pacific NW seems to be a good region for tea.

I managed to out myself as one of the people who posted in this thread much more quickly after I showed up at the shop than I intended to.

In any event, I will say that Josh is a pretty enthusiastic person who clearly knows about tea, and I had a good time drinking tea with him across two afternoons, though I ended up very tea-drunk both days. We tried some stuff that I brought to share, as well as a number of his teas. He has a good selection of roasted and aged teas, which is unusual for someone who focuses so heavily on Taiwanese teas.

Also, he mentioned that his current price list is a little lower than some of the prices listed on his site, and I believe he has some new stuff in stock too. If you're willing to pay for samples, he'll also send you samples by mail. Anyway, if you're buying tea online, j-tea is definitely a US vendor to keep in mind. I'm not going to speculate on relative value compared to other vendors, because it's such a subjective area, but he certainly has some teas that are both affordable and good.

Up to Floating Leaves in Seattle this afternoon, and some shops in Vancouver on Sunday.

Thanks for the follow up. I like brick and mortar reports. My local tea shoppe unloaded its GaoShans because the owner likes the taste of the Nantous better. I got my share. Oh I wished I could order from the .TW sites. Now I know someone there so I'll save the Urls as a point of reference when I start begging get me some.

Jim

Will Yardley wrote:

Wait a second- you can discard one tea just because you like another tea better? Toci

The owner is replacing his unknown gaoshans with the known ones. The market place demands it. In the good ole days you could drink a cup of Formosa oolong and be satisfied which still serves me well in this case.

Jim

toci wrote:

This reminds me of a project I've had on the backburner for awhile and wish to solicit advice on. When not traveling around East Asia (and now Germany) I work as a web developer. I have long considered putting something together for interested parties to rate and share opinions on favorite tea sources.

I know quite a few people who follow this list maintain tea blogs, and I wondered if there was interest in posting tea related reviews into a central site that could be easily sortable. For instance, one could easily look at all of the reviews for teas from Houde or Teaspring, or see every vendor who sells Dong Ding.

Last fall I put together a more or less complete design schema, but realized that because of the lack of standardization, it would be near impossible to create a completely open system that also had a qualitative element. That is, because is almost no way (that I know of) to separate between different quality of Dahongpao teas, one's ability to sort would suffer significantly. Most likely, the mass producing vendors would win out over the smaller quality operations.

So I suppose I'll throw this out there: When I am not in East Asia I buy almost all my tea online and would love to build a site that allows interested parties to share tea tasting experiences on a combined platform for tea blogging.

For those interested:

Cheers,

Joel Dietz

I've been there done that and given up. It seems doable but in reality it isn't. Tea is ephemeral and impossible to handle in this manner or along the lines of corkd or beeradvocate. Year to year changes are an instant killer, as soon as a tea gets chronicled it is most likely out of season and while it may be a good indicator of future seasons it is not reliable. Wine has years, tea has months. Vendors buy from numerous sources, so one batch may be from one place and the next may be from another except for very specific teas. There are truly countless reasons and pitfalls. Again, I tried it. You may have better luck, so I wish you the best... but I fear you will quickly come to the same conclusion.

- Dominic