I forgot about this thread a bit!
Thanks for sharing Leo. I figured the closer to Ground Zero you get for tea, the more option’s there would be. I may have to import some of these, just to put them on the “Have Tried” list, though undoubtably I’ll acquire some of Taoti teas when I roll around to Hong Kong in the next few years (another thread on that incoming). I’ll admit the packaging is pretty attractive on those, but I can’t go judging a book by its cover (or tea by its wrapper).
That said, I don’t think they advertise tea brands here in the US. I don’t watch much TV though. I remember Brisk used to advertise with the same long-running commercial; a melting snowman in the summer heat reinvigorated by a cold can of Brisk (Brisk also being an adjective to describe low temperature, so a bit of a lame pun).
Agreed with ICE that nothing tastes like a cup of tea. Probably the worst offender is “Honest Tea” brand “Just Green Tea”. It’s one of those fair trade teas, comes in a glass bottle (not common here in the land of Old Bay anymore) and is utterly bitter. I’m going to assume they boil the green tea leaves for 10 or more minutes to make that tea. For ~1.25USD, it’s also one of the cheapest and pretty much the only completely unsweetened tea here. It has the interesting gastronomic quality of stimulating appetite. I buy one occasionally to remind myself why I don’t buy them more often – I’ll admit I originally liked the bitter.
I wonder what obsticles lie in making decent quality tea industrially. I’m guessing they just get huge quantites of machine picked leaves, probably from lowest bidder farms (which probably have poor quality control in the fields). Honest Tea probably gets their stock from India or Sri Lanka and that Japanese brand above probably imports leaves too. I ought to try and “can” up some cheap quality tea, let it sit a while and see what the result is. Will have to do the same with higher quality stuff.
I’ve wondered how well this all would keep, the finer brewings. I have considered making a steel travel bottle (c. 20oz) of tea the night before and taking that on trips. Will attemt and cross compare for everyone.
Thanks,
M.
