Hey everyone, skip to the bottom if you are just here to see what I’ve got to sell.
It’s been a wild few months (since June really), everything great. The 2 previous posts about Geisha and Aurora were about two of the teas I have recently started to sell. I had(have) intentions on putting up an online store eventually, but in the meantime it’s just word of mouth sales. It was never my intention to have a busy side job, but tea like these you just cant get here — at least not for a reasonable price. Let me back up a bit on how I got into this situation:
I went to Las Vegas for the World Tea Expo in June 2017. It was a 3 day long event for me, with crazy restaurants and nightlife on the side. I felt I should take advantage of being around ‘professionals’ and do some of the classes/workshops. One such class called the ‘World Tasting Tour’ took up the whole first day. The exchange rate between CAD and USD was especially bad at the time, and that class ended up costing me approximately $700. The concept was neat, you spend an hour with an expert of Chinese tea talking about the history, styles, and drinking that tea while the lecture is going on. Then you move to Japan, then to Taiwan, etc.
At first I thought my taste buds were screwed up from having 1 hour of sleep. (Vegas nightlife baby~) When I tried the first tea, it was weak, tasted burned, and we were drinking from little plastic cups (the cup thing isn’t such a big deal I guess… but I had higher hopes after spending what I did). Let me get 1 thing straight at this point: I love Chinese tea, I think it’s the best in the world, but I’ve probably had more Japanese green tea than all Chinese tea combined. During the Chinese lecture, we had maybe 6 different teas — I didn’t like any of them. My heart sunk into my chest and I was really doubting myself and my taste buds because glancing around the room, it didn’t look like anyone else felt uneasy about all this. I felt that I’d know for sure if it was me or the event in the second hour with Japanese tea.
Suffice it to say it was the event; and I was very disappointed up until the very end when I got a chance to try tea from Hawaii. That was pretty remarkable. Big Island Tea by Eliah and Cam. Day 1 ended with a lot of negativity on my part, but motivated me to hit the expo floor really hard the next day. Going in to the whole thing I had a plan to visit certain booths, see what I want to see first, and fill in the rest of my time with things I didn’t really care about afterwards. I did not stick to that plan, and started in aisle 1 (Chinese wholesale).
Aisle 1 was dead. There were like 6 people walking in the aisle at any given time. It was very interesting to see the expectations the seller has of the buyer. Mostly because samples were not given to us (unless you made an appointment to sit down with them and almost prove yourself) The dry tea leaf was displayed on plates labelled the type that it is, generally pretty specific ‘anji bai cha’, ‘longjing’, but in other cases ‘puerh’ or ‘white’. I noticed a lot of chinese manufacturers are making japanese style sencha and matcha using the japanese cultivars. To be honest I have a lot of stories (so many!) about my experiences in this aisle, maybe I can write another blog post about it in the future. I’ll get to the point.
I met a wholesale distributor of teas which I am thoroughly impressed by. One store I know of that has a tremendous reputation internationally (I think it’s the best tea shop in the world tbh) buys their Chinese tea from this distributor, and now I can get them for the wholesale price too. I don’t have a large inventory, nor do I have any immediate plans to expand the selection however if you would be interested in any Chinese tea send me an email, at the very least I can get you a sample of it, and we can go from there.
Iron Goddess of Mercy (Tie Guan Yin) Grade AAAA
Phoenix Oolong Single Bush Fragrance of Ginger Flower (Feng Huang Dan Zhu Jiang Hua Xiang)
Wudong Mountain Phoenix Oolong Old Tree Fragrance of Honey Orchid (Feng Huang Lao Cong Mi Lan Xiang)
Wudong Mountain Phoenix Oolong Fragrance of Honey Orchid (Feng Huang Dan Cong Mi Lan Xiang)
Phoenix Oolong Fragrance of Honey Orchid (Feng Huang Dan Cong Mi Lan Xiang)
Anji White Tea (Anji Bai Cha) which for the record is a green tea
Milk Oolong
Osmanthus Oolong
Old Tree Black Tea from Yunnan
Damask Rose
and I have little glass tea cups for sale too, you may have seen them at Q if you’ve been in for dinner.
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