Tea from Bangladesh?

Hi Carla:

Why weird question? Bangladesh is one of the top tea producer country in number of production and quality. Bangladesh tea is under valued in the international market for lack of publicity. Right now Bangladesh entire to the Gourmet tea market and produce some top class organic black and green tea. The black tea goes to Scandinavian countries and I also heard English prestigious Mall Harrods's start selling Bangladeshi organic tea. The top quality green teas goes to Japan.

Couple of on line store offers Bangladeshi tea. Right now I remember only two. They are:

(53&Category_Code=Exotic&Product_Count=0 Teasource (US based Merchant)

1&LSTCRIT=(1,10)&LIMIT Le Palais des thes is a Paris based world famous vendor. They have tea stores couple different countries)

I will recommend you to try the one from Le Palais. The taste is subtle, sweet and very balanced but still not the best quality from Bangladesh.

I have recently visited Bangladesh and got some unique treasure. If you are so interested let me know, I will send you some.

For more detail read my post at RFDT "Another tea Journey". I wrote little about Bangladeshi tea.

I like your idea try teas from different countries. I have been told African teas are poor quality but so far I have tried tea from couple countries and I discovered the big lie. African black teas are as good as Bangladeshi and Assam.

Enjoy your tea adventure

Ripon Maputo, Mozambique

Hello everyone weird-ish question of the day for you: do you know where to find reasonably-priced tea from Bangladesh? I got it into my head to start an armchair tour of the tea-producing world by sampling a different tea

every day, but I hit a brick wall with Bangladesh. I know the country is meant to produce a pretty good organic tea, which was showcased at Harrods a while ago (I'm UK-based), but I can't seem to be able to source it anywhere (other than ordering it directly from the producers,

which would cost me a fortune in shipping and taxes). Can anyone help? A zillion thanks Carla

On 2 Mar 2006 09:18:08 -0800, snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote: . .

Dear Ripon,

You always write that the top class Bangladeshi tea goes to Scandinavia, but believe me I have looked, and nowhere can I find this waunted tea. Any clues to who imports it?

I know this offer was for Carla, but if you have a few grams to spare I would be overjoyed! ;-)

Wonderful post!

So I think too. But African countries suffer from the same lack of publicity as Bangladesh. And they do produce some real low quality tea, but so does every other tea growing country I can think of.

Lars (Bergen, Norway)

Dear Lars,

I remember you told me before you couldn't find it over there. I delivered your view to that particular exporter and his answer was- "Couple of Scandinavian traders go to their garden and buy direct from them, they don't know where these traders re-sale them in that region." My understanding is they don't want to tell me the exact name because they think, I might get in to their business. I am sure your tea travel experience in India and Sri Lanka gave you the same view. People from that region believe in information secrecy. To me this is not a good idea to block the flow of information.

As you mentioned every tea producing country produce low quality tea but the tea broker have a big role to create this environment so they have more bargaining power with African tea growers. This is a very hot topic, so I will leave it to your judgment.

I would love to share some with you. Send me your address to my other account snipped-for-privacy@intra.co.mz I have to post it from South Africa when I go there next time. Postal system in Mozambique sucks. You never know when things go in someone pocket-:)

How is your business going on? I am planning to go to Germany to watch World cup soccer. If time works, I might stop by in two Scandinavian countries and search for this Bangladeshi tea. This is in my work list last two years who are buying and selling this black pearl tea over there.

Ripon Maputo, Mozambique

Dear Ripon thank you so much for all your suggestions. Harrods did indeed showcase some Bangladeshi tea, but they aren't currently selling it. However, I did go to the Palais des Thes website and bought quite a bit of it (actually ended up buying a lot of other teas too--not good for my budget, but great fun). And thanks for directing me to your wonderful post, which I very much enjoyed. Makes my efforts at chronicling my armchair tour, which I am doing on my blog

in the offchance you're interested) sound rather pitiful. I wish I could do a

*real* tour. Still, an armchair one will have to suffice for the moment... Thanks again for your help c