Jan 22nd, '09, 17:18
Posts: 20891
Joined: Apr 22nd, '06, 20:52
Scrolling: scrolling
Location: Back in the TeaCave atop Mt. Fuji
Sencha Zuiko from Den's currently. I am learning something about asamushi and my personal tastes, and for some reason I rebelled against this for some time now. I seem to prefer asamaushi with less leaf and slightly more time. About 25% less leaf. This time, 4 grams per 6.8 ounces. I have been using 5.5-6 grams per 6.8 ounces.
blah blah blah SENCHA blah blah blah!!!
I am probably between 71% to 80% satisfied with my tea vendors. Out of the 8 vendors that I purchased from this year, I had one bad experience, which did get resolved. One other vendor was mediocre, but the remaining six vendors after that were fantastic and are definitely places that I will reorder from.
Today I sampled the Flower Oolong from the box pass and am now finishing up the day with an herbal blend of vanilla rooibos, peppermint, and lavender.
Today I sampled the Flower Oolong from the box pass and am now finishing up the day with an herbal blend of vanilla rooibos, peppermint, and lavender.
Jan 22nd, '09, 23:06
Posts: 995
Joined: Feb 8th, '08, 14:22
Location: Fort Worth, Texas
Contact:
auggy
Crazy. Thanks for sharing that info - looks like you were able to get actual information from them. I eventually got and email that basically said "Is it an emergency you get this tea soon?". Well, no, but a one month turn around is not so fun, you know? Ah well. Maybe we'll get our tea one day!danibob wrote:I placed an order with them on the 11th. With express shipping too, and my status still says 'new order'. After two emails to them they responded saying they are very busy with the chinese new year and won't be able to ship until after the festivities are over. They really should have alerted potential customers with this information on their front page.auggy wrote: I placed an order w/ Teacuppa (my first) on the 2nd and it still shows "checking stock" and customer service won't respond to my inquiries. I've resigned myself to forgetting about it and hoping that it magically shows up in the next few months and then I'll be pleasantly surprised that tea randomly appeared instead of frustrated that it seems to take so long.
Yea, even if their tea is good I'm not sure I'll be buying from them again due to questionable customer service.auggy wrote:Crazy. Thanks for sharing that info - looks like you were able to get actual information from them. I eventually got and email that basically said "Is it an emergency you get this tea soon?". Well, no, but a one month turn around is not so fun, you know? Ah well. Maybe we'll get our tea one day!danibob wrote:I placed an order with them on the 11th. With express shipping too, and my status still says 'new order'. After two emails to them they responded saying they are very busy with the chinese new year and won't be able to ship until after the festivities are over. They really should have alerted potential customers with this information on their front page.auggy wrote: I placed an order w/ Teacuppa (my first) on the 2nd and it still shows "checking stock" and customer service won't respond to my inquiries. I've resigned myself to forgetting about it and hoping that it magically shows up in the next few months and then I'll be pleasantly surprised that tea randomly appeared instead of frustrated that it seems to take so long.
Unusual market conditions and pricing
In the past six months, base prices for many commodities have plummeted as global markets contracted. Fuel prices have suspiciously 'stabilized' and even risen slightly at the pump, here in the US, despite crude futures continuing its price slide (to as low as $34/barrel just a few days ago). It's even worse for automotive oils and lubricants. The price as climbed as much as 150% in the last 18 months, with distributors smirking when vendors ask why.
It's called: market collusion to fix pricing.
The tea market is no exception; demand has dropped as consumers reigned in spending. A considerable tea surplus now exists, due to booming production in Asia and growing production outside of Asia, with some 1400 clonals and varietals in the offering to match tea characteristics to climate and soils in new tea productions areas.
In recent years, consumer demand for 'chi-chi' teas and 'health' teas (flavored, scented, or with added florals, fruit, etc) induced many tea retailers to shift away from offering high-end teas in favor of 'doctored' teas that appealed to a wider consumer audience. That supported a growing market of mediocre teas of low quality that could be hidden by flavor additives and sold off to naive consumers who were new to tea drinking, as high quality teas.
Moreover, the polyglot of new tea varietals being offered meant that distributors were often unfamiliar with these teas being peddling to new vendors here in the US, UK, Canada and Europe. Vendors were more than happy to reap considerable profit flowing from consumer pockets, as were distributors, regardless of the quality and batch age of the teas being offered to consumers.
Much of this was due to the nature of internet commerce: you can't sample, smell or really look over the teas that you're asking to purchase and are forced to take the vendors word on the provenance of the tea and its quality. You are forced to trust the vendor. Unhappy customers are offered a choice of replacement teas, but not a return on their money - that's presuming that customer service responded to their complaints. Most lazy consumers simply turned to other tea vendors, rather than question the vendor and demand a refund for suboptimal teas.
What happened is this: many mediocre teas were either peddled as higher grade teas or they were used to dilute notable estate teas, down the distribution chain. Witness the known production yield and the quantity peddled as Darjeeling in 2007 - 300% of actual production volume. The was just as true for high-demand greens, oolongs and aged teas - driven by coupled sudden economic wealth in Asia and growing interest for 'boutique' teas in the West.
Also true was the opening up of Indian/Ceylonese tea markets to overseas sales, about 5 years ago. Suddenly you had access to favored estate teas that had previously seen very limited distribution abroad. Another unfortunate change occurred in labeling regulations that further eroded quality controls in favor of sales abroad.
So we have had a flood of teas hitting the market, and in lockstep with demand, a steep increase in retail pricing despite increased supply, because global market dynamics and easy credit of the past 5 years have changed historical balance of demand/supply and retail cost dictated by local or regional markets.
Note that despite the giant decrease in a major overhead cost - distribution - and despite the polyglot of teas sitting in warehouses, the prices of tea have not dropped much at all in recent months. Unscrupulous vendors are selling stock that is sometimes far from fresh or at it's optimum, because its no longer turning over quickly and distributors are sitting on their wares, waiting for the global economy to recover.
For those of us who have been drinking tea for decades, the drop in quality of many familiar teas is noticeable. We are STILL paying the higher prices of the last year (jumped up, oh-so-sorry, due to rising fuel prices, monsoon and drought, cold weather, crop failures, pests and other acts of god), despite reduced demand, commodity surplus and vastly decreased storage and distribution costs.
This parallels food costs pricing in general and underscores my comments on the changes in market pricing dynamics wrought by globalization. Distributors have decided that its cheaper to sit on their surplus than drop their prices. And internet retailers that have considerably lower indirect costs than those of stores, are acting collusively - by checking each others prices -to keep retail pricing up to offset smaller sales volume of the past 6 months.
For the discerning consumer, it's still possible to purchase very drinkable teas at reasonable (but non-the-less, still elevated) pricing, if you purchase from reputable vendors and stay away from the ultra-specialized teas. For the chump, there is plenty of opportunity to spend your dwindling dollars on 'rare' teas with exorbitant pricing that does not match their known quality characteristics.
It's called: market collusion to fix pricing.
The tea market is no exception; demand has dropped as consumers reigned in spending. A considerable tea surplus now exists, due to booming production in Asia and growing production outside of Asia, with some 1400 clonals and varietals in the offering to match tea characteristics to climate and soils in new tea productions areas.
In recent years, consumer demand for 'chi-chi' teas and 'health' teas (flavored, scented, or with added florals, fruit, etc) induced many tea retailers to shift away from offering high-end teas in favor of 'doctored' teas that appealed to a wider consumer audience. That supported a growing market of mediocre teas of low quality that could be hidden by flavor additives and sold off to naive consumers who were new to tea drinking, as high quality teas.
Moreover, the polyglot of new tea varietals being offered meant that distributors were often unfamiliar with these teas being peddling to new vendors here in the US, UK, Canada and Europe. Vendors were more than happy to reap considerable profit flowing from consumer pockets, as were distributors, regardless of the quality and batch age of the teas being offered to consumers.
Much of this was due to the nature of internet commerce: you can't sample, smell or really look over the teas that you're asking to purchase and are forced to take the vendors word on the provenance of the tea and its quality. You are forced to trust the vendor. Unhappy customers are offered a choice of replacement teas, but not a return on their money - that's presuming that customer service responded to their complaints. Most lazy consumers simply turned to other tea vendors, rather than question the vendor and demand a refund for suboptimal teas.
What happened is this: many mediocre teas were either peddled as higher grade teas or they were used to dilute notable estate teas, down the distribution chain. Witness the known production yield and the quantity peddled as Darjeeling in 2007 - 300% of actual production volume. The was just as true for high-demand greens, oolongs and aged teas - driven by coupled sudden economic wealth in Asia and growing interest for 'boutique' teas in the West.
Also true was the opening up of Indian/Ceylonese tea markets to overseas sales, about 5 years ago. Suddenly you had access to favored estate teas that had previously seen very limited distribution abroad. Another unfortunate change occurred in labeling regulations that further eroded quality controls in favor of sales abroad.
So we have had a flood of teas hitting the market, and in lockstep with demand, a steep increase in retail pricing despite increased supply, because global market dynamics and easy credit of the past 5 years have changed historical balance of demand/supply and retail cost dictated by local or regional markets.
Note that despite the giant decrease in a major overhead cost - distribution - and despite the polyglot of teas sitting in warehouses, the prices of tea have not dropped much at all in recent months. Unscrupulous vendors are selling stock that is sometimes far from fresh or at it's optimum, because its no longer turning over quickly and distributors are sitting on their wares, waiting for the global economy to recover.
For those of us who have been drinking tea for decades, the drop in quality of many familiar teas is noticeable. We are STILL paying the higher prices of the last year (jumped up, oh-so-sorry, due to rising fuel prices, monsoon and drought, cold weather, crop failures, pests and other acts of god), despite reduced demand, commodity surplus and vastly decreased storage and distribution costs.
This parallels food costs pricing in general and underscores my comments on the changes in market pricing dynamics wrought by globalization. Distributors have decided that its cheaper to sit on their surplus than drop their prices. And internet retailers that have considerably lower indirect costs than those of stores, are acting collusively - by checking each others prices -to keep retail pricing up to offset smaller sales volume of the past 6 months.
For the discerning consumer, it's still possible to purchase very drinkable teas at reasonable (but non-the-less, still elevated) pricing, if you purchase from reputable vendors and stay away from the ultra-specialized teas. For the chump, there is plenty of opportunity to spend your dwindling dollars on 'rare' teas with exorbitant pricing that does not match their known quality characteristics.
Jan 23rd, '09, 14:18
Posts: 470
Joined: Sep 29th, '08, 08:49
Location: Floating blissfully in a bowl of Matcha
Short version
Mixed experience with vendors: couple of bad buys, many decent teas purchased, with one exceptionally good buy, which is why I put my rating at ~50%
Short version is this:
Vendor and consumer purchases through the Web short circuit price controls set by local or regional supply and demand. In other words, supply and demand variation is not connected to product pricing. This is especially true when many vendors collude to keep pricing artificially high, despite a drop overhead costs, in demand that temporarily increases supply. So we have many vendors who avoid price competition. They don't want to loose money AND they are banking on the fact that consumers won't revolt.
We see this not only in the tea (and tea-like products - rooibos and mate'), coffee and wine specialty beverage industries, but also in other broad global markets like food, where distribution tends to be on a much larger than local or regional, as was common before the early 1990s. That was the start of mega-distributors, the entities that 'globalized' supply and demand.
The fine print, in my long winded post above, discusses disturbing issues of questionable product labeling, inadequate quality control and a trade-off of quantity for quality to meet demand in bubble markets. Pu'erh was one such bubble market, mentioned in a recent post, but another is the flavored teas - especially greens/whites and oolongs - and this has pushed general tea retailers to favor lower-value product with high consumer demand (and therefore product pricing that doesn't reflect product quality but rather 'fad' popularity).
Edit: Formosa oolong and estate Assams in the cup today. Sencha and gunpowder (temple of heaven) yesterday.
Short version is this:
Vendor and consumer purchases through the Web short circuit price controls set by local or regional supply and demand. In other words, supply and demand variation is not connected to product pricing. This is especially true when many vendors collude to keep pricing artificially high, despite a drop overhead costs, in demand that temporarily increases supply. So we have many vendors who avoid price competition. They don't want to loose money AND they are banking on the fact that consumers won't revolt.
We see this not only in the tea (and tea-like products - rooibos and mate'), coffee and wine specialty beverage industries, but also in other broad global markets like food, where distribution tends to be on a much larger than local or regional, as was common before the early 1990s. That was the start of mega-distributors, the entities that 'globalized' supply and demand.
The fine print, in my long winded post above, discusses disturbing issues of questionable product labeling, inadequate quality control and a trade-off of quantity for quality to meet demand in bubble markets. Pu'erh was one such bubble market, mentioned in a recent post, but another is the flavored teas - especially greens/whites and oolongs - and this has pushed general tea retailers to favor lower-value product with high consumer demand (and therefore product pricing that doesn't reflect product quality but rather 'fad' popularity).
Edit: Formosa oolong and estate Assams in the cup today. Sencha and gunpowder (temple of heaven) yesterday.