Tuesday TeaDay 9/22/09 criteria for purchase?

[Chip]

It is another great TeaDay! So share it with us and share what is in your cup throughout the day!

Yesterday we discussed seasonal tea change. You can still vote and discuss yesterday's topic!

Today's TeaPoll and discussion topic. When shopping for tea, what factors do you consider as your top 5 (you may vote for 5!)? Please share with us.

I am looking forward to sharing this TeaDay with everyone. Bottoms up.

[Maitre_Tea]

Most of the information mentioned in the poll should be a given...such as region/harvest dates/roast or oxidation levels. I tend to be leery of most product descriptions vendors provide, since they all start to sound the same, or the vendor tries to hard to be waxing poetic with their words, or making obnoxious comparisons to random things...but some vendor descriptions do tickle my fancy, such as Imen's descriptions, which are a nice personal touch.

Price matters in some small sense, but only if the vendor is charging an obscene amount of money for a tea. I don't like to be cheap with my tea purchases...if I wanted cheap, I would go to the Chinese supermarket. Good tea is rarely cheap, but cheap tea can be good, and expensive tea does not always mean great tea*

The vendor is kind of important, but I've been very select about who I'm ordering from. Regarding packaging, most packaging has been decent...there is a certain vendor whose packaging I disapprove of, but their offerings are satisfactory enough that I forgive them (slightly) for it.

I trust recommendations, from those here and tea drinkers IRL. Of course, I like recommendations to be elaborate on, like "oh, I love this *insert tea* because it's *insert good qualities*" My tastes will probably be different from others, so I think in the end it's more about just purchasing from reliable sources...and if you make mistakes, you can count it as part of your tuition. The way I see it, tea leaf tuition is much cheaper than tea ware tuition.

Oh yes, leaf quality is important, but it's hard to judge that thing over the internet, so unless a tea looks crazily dusty or whatnot, it's not really part of my judgment criteria.

*para-phrasing from MarshalN here

[Geekgirl]

TASTE!!! I've had the luck to be able to taste quite a few of my purchases before buying, so now, when I can, that's the most influential criteria. After that, recommendations, region, then price.

[Chip]

oops, you can now vote for up to 5 options as originally intended!

And no more error messages!

[Maitre_Tea]

TASTE!!! I've had the luck to be able to taste quite a few of my purchases before buying, so now, when I can, that's the most influential criteria. After that, recommendations, region, then price.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that! Yes, that definitely is the best criteria for purchase, and I lament the inability to do that here in the states...I love tasting teas in the store when I was in Taiwan or China, because I also got to taste really good tea without having to buy it.

That being said, it's also very tiring and stressful. Oftentimes it becomes a battle of wits between the vendor and me. See here for more details:
http://marshaln.xanga.com/592308298/thi ... erh-store/
http://marshaln.xanga.com/592491558/thi ... erh-store/
http://half-dipper.blogspot.com/2007/09 ... rient.html

[Drax]

Recommendations used to be my sole guidance, but I've given up on that after a year, and having determined my own interests and likes. Also, I quickly noted that my experiences with types of tea were often different from other people (I enjoyed stuff others didn't, and vice versa).

At the moment, my biggest criteria are the type of tea (the processing), and the harvest info, and the region... I suppose I should have selected vendor as well, since I only tend to go to certain vendors, though I am open to using new ones.

I'm going round two with a XiaGuan 2009 supposedly from wild trees. It's strong yet smooth, not at all burning or caustic. Almost slick. Very interesting, in a good way.

[olivierco]

For me price isn't any big issue if the tea is good and as long as I stay within my 150$ per month budget. I like nice looking leaves. The vendor should provide accurate and detailed descriptions, including harvest info and the packaging should well preserve the tea.

No tea today.

[Victoria]

Origin/region/elevation is key for me, then I check pictures if available.

In my cup this morning 2009 FF Darjeeling.

Have a nice day everyone!

[Salsero]

Recommendations from people in TeaChat, Badger and Blade, blogs, personal correspondence, etc. are most critical for me.

[CynTEAa]

Pretty much everything is considered but taste is so important. It can have a great 'pedigree' but if the taste is off, no thank you.

Still feeling under the weather - bleh! Looking forward to some sencha and perhaps some honeybush today.

Happy TeaDay everyone!

[JBaymore]

Good tea is rarely cheap, but cheap tea can be good, and expensive tea does not always mean great tea*

There's a lot of truth summed up here. Ditto from me.

best,

................john

[Intuit]

We are in the worst recession in 60 years. Price matters, unless you purchase to impress others, or are obsessive or wealthy.

Taste, smell and leaf appearance matter, but one cannot verify leaf quality physically unless you are purchasing from a physical store. Even in restocking a known tea from accepted vendors, quality can vary seasonally and over time, as crop quality changes, and as wholesalers shuffle quality according to retail buyer experience.

Larger retailers who bank on their name, but have lost their best buyers in staff reductions or hired relatively unsophisticated young and untrained buyers sans connections and even less knowledgeable warehouse and shipping staff, are having real difficulties managing product line quality in the last few years.

Wavering or slowly diminishing product quality used to affect pricing, but not any longer, a function of global population growth and decoupling of local and regional markets due to internet sales.

This is the opinion of many seasoned customers and also of highly experienced growers family (2nd/3rd gen) who are now actively selling directly to retail.

The other concern is a lack of product description specifics: date of harvest being the worst offender. The complication and rub maybe dependence on grower/processor packaging methods, where retail buyers assume that all units received are of same quality and that vacuum packing has kept product pristine, which is not physically possible.

Robust high mt oolong in cup. A tasty but, but not pretty, tea.

[leiche2]

Since I'm tethered by a student budget, price is at the top of my list, then oxidation/processing and region/origin. I know what I tend to like. Amusingly, I've found that most of the time I prefer cheaper (not necessarily low quality, of course) teas anyway. What does that say about me, eh?

Started my day with a long-ignored sample of Adagio's Yunnan Noir as part of an effort to clear out and organize my tea cupboard. Just water in my cup right now, I'm afraid. Perhaps some Houjicha soon, after I make some progress with my laundry. Ugh.

[olivierco]

We are in the worst recession in 60 years. Price matters, unless you purchase to impress others, or are obsessive or wealthy.

Tea is one of the less expensive beverage so if you need to save money on your budget there are certainly more efficient ways to do it.

[Chip]

OOPS, I meant 5 criteria and 5 votes!