OK, now I'm officially tired of Teavana

Ive been to Teavana once. Id go more often if they had a selection that wasnt mostly blends. Ive gotten use to paying $10/oz for teas I can find locally without waiting for China Post. My local tea shoppe had a sale this weekend of discount blended teas the owner got from his German supplier. I didnt even bother to go. I did ride by on the bike and thought the place was a voting precinct. Nobody cares if I think it is more fun to shop a herbal store and creating their own. The only reason I dont run a tea shoppe is Id have to give people what the want.

PS Try their Six Summits and tell me what you think.

Jim

I honestly don't think I'll be spending any of my money there, even though I'd imagine the six summits is good to some degree... I'd imagine it has a proper tea analog under the proper name but I'd have no way of knowing or country of origin from their secretive nature (like Adagio) which I guess they think keeps customers from going elsewhere or ever becoming knowledgeable about the tea and the story that goes along with it.

I buy tea at times from a few local coffee roasters that sell loose tea. The tea is poor to passable in quality and most often grossly overpriced but they sell it by the actual name and list the country or estate of origin and even though they are coffee folks they do a very good job of teaching and explaining the offerings even if it isn't a masterclass. People walk out with barely passable tea but at least some actual knowledge.

As you and others here know I have kicked around the idea of opening a shop of my own for a few years, I've run the numbers many ways and with many different angles. The problem always was to stay afloat you have to either go evil like Teavana where it is about exploiting customers or you go good and offer great tea with great atmosphere and service but ultimately fail financially. I actually have a specific account where I have been saving to, even at a loss, go that second route eventually. My only hope is that my numbers and research proves wrong and I surprise myself.

I'm sure the folks at Teavana started off right, but found that the top sellers (and top profit margins) were the flavor blends and rather than try to correct that they went with it and then began exploiting it further and further. I'll be placing an order with Seven Cups and Stephane Erler this week happily.

- Dominic

For me, this is an important issue. When a vendor conceals information that would enable me look elsewhere to try other teas that might be comparable to the vendor's own, I feel betrayed. In my experience, there are very few vendors in the USA who never hide the rightful names of teas. (Note that I'm not asking for detailed information like which wholesaler or farmer they bought from.)

I would be interested to have a list of vendors who *always* use teas' rightful names.

/Lew

I don't have a list of domestic vendors and as I tried to think of them I realized I was coming up with a mix of domestic and overseas so I just gave up :) I think most of the higher touted vendors we all deal with and discuss all do this properly. And most of them can and will happily even give you that deeper info if you ask. The only time I care about farmer/wholesaler is for a particular tea I truly love (a top 10 personal favorite) and then it is only because I'd love to know more about a tea I treasure. I don't need it to make the initial purchase. I want the real tea name and the country or location of origin, I don't need any more or less. It comes down to honesty and good business and I'll support that anyday domestic or not. I wish more American businesses would get over this secrecy==sales mentality, how many of our most beloved tea vendors have been around a long time and doing just fine without that.

- Dominic

Yes, I'm also a Open Source/Creative Commons fan... and extremely happy today.

I'm having trouble thinking of one that *always* does this properly.

/Lew

I'd say Seven Cups and IPOT (In Pursuit of Tea) are two domestic options with proper info, Seven Cups maybe a bit moreso but both fit... Those two came to mind quickly initially, if I thought on it I could probably come up with a couple more.

- Dominic

I walk into Seven Cups and recognize every Chinese tea on the shelf. I walk into Red Blossom and never heard of their proprietary specialty Heirloom San Ling Xi. The fact that there is even less Google information than Six Summits doesnt mean the vendor is pulling a fast one. When I go into a tea store Im looking for something I dont have.

Jim

I tried Googling in Chinese for Six Summits using a few different Chinese renderings I could think of. I came up empty. Especially with my limited Chinese, this isn't conclusive, but I'm suspicious. Some people reading this are fluent in Chinese and could improve on my, uh, quest. Any volunteers for this mission?

/Lew

That's interesting that Teavana has registered "six summits oolong" as a trademark.

But lots of famous places in China are so numbered. Like "six peaks", "three rivers", or whatever. Name a geographical feature, add a number to it, and then you come up with a number of the famous places. Chinese are into numbers.

For example, in Fujian, there is a place in the northeast part of Pingnan county (in Fujian's northeast) called "six cliffs" (liu yan)

- but may be also translated as "six peaks" in english . It's in a provicial park. Each one of those cliffs has a separate name, like "Big White Cliff", "Guanyin Cliff", "Hexagon Cliff", "Maitreya Cliff", "Giant Buddha Cliff'", "Snake Group Cliff". I've never been there. But it sounds like an interesting place to visit.

BTW, there are a few words that literally mean "summit" in Chinese. First, there is ding "?", then there is dian "?", and there is also another dian "?", and then there are also various alternate character variants of those. And there is also feng "?", which can alternatively be written as "?o", and there are other variants of that character.

I've had the same problem with Teavana. The only way I could think to "solve" the problem is the online tea rating service I mentioned earlier, perhaps at some point branching out into a magazine for tea 'snobs' that like something other than over-flavored over-sugared teas. I'm still not sure how best to approach the issue, but I tend to think that some sort of internet option is best, especially if persons have saved up money and considered bricks and mortar. I can't think of any reason off-hand why various existing tea blogs couldn't be combined, or various persons who contribute to this list could also contribute to a magazine of sorts.

Although last time I brought this up someone (Spacecowboy? Dominic?) mentioned that they had relative success with google searches. I have not and am tired of more or less all the brick and mortar options I have encountered more or less everywhere I have lived (except Tokyo, which I suspect continues to offer better than Western PA).

Here is what I am using assuming my Wee Eee from Taiwan can handle Chinese:

? ? [feng1] /peak/summit/ ?p ? [dian1] /summit/ ?? ?? [ding3 feng1] /peak/summit/ ?? ?? [ding3 duan1] /summit/peak/ ?? ?? [ding3 dian3] /summit/peak/ ?? ?? [gao1 feng1] /peak/summit/height/

While I am here does anybody know the ??????????????

???

Hey Joel, no wasn't me... in fact I was the one who mentioned I had tried the same thing and have the scars to prove it :) It is almost impossible to properly catalog and offer "reviews" for tea. It is just so vastly different than wine or even food. It is like trying to hit a fast moving target. Each vendor, each batch from each vendor, each season, each year, each estate, etc. all have huge influence on everything from taste, color, roasting, handling, and on and on... and that is all *before* you get to the insanity-inducing problem of individual brewing (water quality and type, temp, teaware, different senses, etc.). There are just so many variables.

I keep trying to think up a unique way to handle the problem because it intrigues me, but every time I hit a major snag which spells death. Basically it is a schema/design issue. Sorting by tea estate/source would naturally be first, but that is so hard to determine that it causes the first big hurdle. So you can categorize by year and region... then season and then the different teas but there has to be some note as to the vendor or the actual estate/source as well somewhere in there. A well taken photo of the dry leaf and color of the liquor is also very important for both documentation and to have something to compare your efforts to. The only real "standard" is in the brewing if one uses the international competition method of 3g tea/

150cc boiling water/6 minutes steep time. This generally produces a result that isn't what you would normally drink for pleasure, but it is the standard and has been in use for a long time successfully.

Even with the loss of a few highly respected members over time there is still a wealth of knowledge and experience here and enough to easily produce a high quality production (Magazine, book, what have you) but I think the coordination and logistics would be a high hurdle... I'd love to be wrong here :) As for combining blogs, most of us who blog link to other blogs on tea and since there are relatively few the web works pretty well... but I find new ones all the time. I too am from Western PA (I work in Pittsburgh and live about 30-45 minutes NE of the city) so I feel your pain in regards to tea availability locally... which is why I'd love to open a shop. I share your passion and ideas but I have just not been able to bring them to life by myself so far.

- Dominic

I was thinking about this problem too, and here are some thoughts: First, only current season matters. It would be impossible to cover all or even most teas so it's best to concentrate on a few from each popular type, e.g. take silver needles and have ratings of it from several vendors for current season. Then take Yunnan Gold and also have ratings on it from a few good vendors. For my taste, I would like to see ratings for Pai Mutan, Assam, Darjeeling, BLC, dragon well. Actually there was a site a while ago called 'We Review Teas', they had the right idea. It wasn't perfect but it was pretty close. One crucial thing is that old seasons don't show up at all unless you specifically search for them. It should be possible to make a sortable, filterable results page, so that you can sort by vendor, by price, by score, by value (i.e. cheap but pretty good), by type and maybe something else.

I don't know that much about pu-erhs and aged oolongs. How much do the offerings change from season to season?

One other thing is that you have to somehow prevent people from tea shops giving ratings and writing reviews (unless they disclose from which shop they come from). If there are

2-3 dozen reviewers that should be fine because if one person constantly gives high ratings to lousy teas from one store, the bias will become apparent. Therefore there should be a fairly low limit to reviewers.

The main issue is that there's just not enough people here. It seems like there's only about 10 people posting semi- regularly?

Another idea: we should have a seasonal thread that would give advice for newbies in regard to what teas are good as an introduction, i.e. not too expensive, good, tolerant of imprecise brewing, cheap and fast shipping here in US (and separately noted UK stores for european tea drinkers).

Just as a quick example: I would recommend Silver needles and yunnan gold from Hou De,

2003 chen guang he tang green puerh also from Hou De, and Darjeeling 2nd flush from IPOT for current season.

And when a new season starts, we would make a new thread.

For a tea name, you wouldn't find so many characters. They reduce to one character to make it more concise. So it won't be ????? or ?????, it would be more like ???? or ???? or ???? or something like that.

Don't forget, you can also add the mountain character "shan" in front of those too: ?? ?? ?? ??

And these would also mean summit - or more precisely, the summit of a mountain.

But again, no ????? or ????? or ?????.

That would be: ???

All good ideas.

Sadly a ton of the great posters have either moved on or left for other reasons and this place is becoming a shell of what it once was. Honestly, I've wanted to just give up and move on myself lately but I've tried to hang around in hopes things might change... but it's not looking like it. It really pains me to even say it. I have learned so much here and my tastes have grown and changed in ways that they hadn't over 12+ years like they did here in just a few.

I don't know what the answer is. I miss the Mike Petros, Michael Plants, Karstens, Dogmas, etc... I miss really talking and hearing about tea. Real conversations and knowledge... There are still glowing embers here and I just wish they'd fan into a flame again.

- Dominic

Yeah. It is getting pretty dead here. Now, I mostly post on Sanzui. They got a ton of interesting discussions there. You couldn't read all of the threads in one day.

I still remember the day I stepped out of the wilderness and found this group in 95. I think the sum total of what has been said here will be the reference for all things said about tea. I remember the first Chinese tea characters I saw posted here by Kuri from Japan. Yesterday I generated my first tea character using BoPoMoFo without a copy and paste from some Chinese file. I sometimes wonder about the people who disappear like Wesley Neal Willams who knew everything about Yixing but couldnt find any tea in VanCouver BC. I know people have a life and move on. Maybe theyll come back when they have time to sit down and think.

Jim

PS I remember my most humiliat> I don't know what the answer is. I miss the Mike Petros, Michael

Can you give me a link where I can find one of your posts there. I need to study Chinese grammar besides the textbooks.

Jim