hello and question from a lurker :)

There is always The Canister and To (Two?) a Tea on Corydon. Both of these places store tea in bulk glass canisters causing way too much light exposure, The Canister has too much coffee and chocolate smells in the air to avoid contamination. I also doubt that the tea is all that fresh at either place.

Which leaves Chinatown. Decent tea can be found with some searching.

Green: my favourite chinatown green right now is "Superior Yunzhen" which comes in a double lidded white metal canister and costs about $5/200g. IMO the canister alone is almost worth the price. It's a nice Yunnan green which exhibits a number of different flavour profiles (most of them pleasant) depending on water temp. This tea is part of a series of metal canister packaged Yunnan teas most of which are quite nice. It can be found at the Oriental Market and Dynasty on Main St.

Oolong: WuYi Yancha available from the Oriental Market at 268 King. This tea is on the wall behind the checkout and you have to ask for it. It comes in a big silvery canister marked "Fujian Oolong Wu-I Yen Cha". This is admittedly about as far from a Tung Ting as you can get. It's a very dark long-leaf oolong with a roasty malt-chocolate flavour and a pretty strong "yan" character (a sort of woody/metallic/limestone-like flavour). At $26 per 200g it isn't cheap, except for a yancha, but it is quite good. This is a lower grade version of Da Hong Bao which, if you can find it, is more like $40-60/ 100g.

There are tremendous quantities of Ti Kuan Yin to be found but I haven't tried many of them and haven't liked any that I tried.

Cheers,

Cameron

thanks Cameron!

i will definitely check out the place on main street, so far i've only really checked out the Sun-Wah on king and higgins (they have a bunch of tins and such on a shelf near the checkout, as well as some industrial bags of oolong, pu-erh, and jasmine close to the entrance), and another one on king, i can't remember what it's called, but i think it's the one you mentioned (under the Kum Koon restaurant?). other places you might check out are Yeong's on william, and a little hole in the wall chinese grocery on king called the Wah Hing Grocery. there's also a chinese store on mcphillips (close to notre dame), but i have no idea if they have tea, though one would assume.

right now i'm still experimenting with low/medium grade teas just to see what i like before i splurge and buy some good stuff, though the Wu Yi sounds tempting.

right now i'm really liking the Ti Kuan Yin oolong, and am trying a Shu Hsien oolong as well, but i don't seem to like it as much (i just bought a few 150g tins of the 'Golden Dragon Choicest Tea' for about $5 each).

i'll try and check out the rest of those places and let you know what i find.

thanks again,

--mo--

If you can find a Shui Hsien (Shui Xian) worth drinking that costs only 5 dollars of any nationality for 150g, *please* tell the world.

/Lew

hehe. so noted.

--mo--

IMHO, one of the best Canadian teas is King Cole. If you have Loblaws or Sobey's in the Peg, you can get them there. Only get the ones with gauze.

Mo:

You have some good on-line vendors in Canada, who can send you good quality Oolong-

Enjoy some good Oolong from them.

Ripon (Vienna,VA) (Vienna,VA)