Odd this didn't get mentioned, but in a physical tea shop you can taste teas before you buy them, and talk to a human using speech. Unless you can find a really exceptional shop nearby later it would probably work out better to shop online, since the reach of what you can buy there is so great, and with all the options with the right amount of doing price, quality, and value can all line up.
It wouldn't hurt to try to get an idea of the range of what tea costs and a very vague idea of what different teas are initially. It seems like a strange idea to pick a dollar amount, the $100 expressed, and send that to a random vendor along with a random order. If samples are part of that order then the range of what someone could try might be broad, and if it's the right vendor the quality and value would be fine.
Subjective preference comes into play so much that a good tea to one person is not so good to another, although grade is really a separate but related thing. Working around that at first can be tricky, especially since preferences tend to shift a bit over time due to exposure.
Oct 29th, '15, 05:01
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