Ordering Sampling Teas

We ended up having 5 sessions with 5-6 guests per session. The teas we sampled were:

Nine Ladies Dancing – Scottish grown tea, limited stock each year. Absolutely every person in attendance really enjoyed this tea. It is a Very smooth black tea with excellent flavor. We WILL get some of this next year for sure! However, if there is enough interest, we Can get some still this year and it has been added to the website for Pre-order HERE. ….. This IS a Luxury tea, at $2.80 per gram – but Oh so special. I am selling it by the gram to make it affordable to anyone to at least try it or gift it to someone who will really appreciate it. We used 4gm for a 12oz pot and got 2 quality steeps out of the leaf.

Sovereign Bud – Heirloom yellow tea – originally an Emperor Tribute tea, the leaf for this tea is said to come from the same bushes that provided leaf for the Chinese Emperor(s). You can purchase small, affordable portions as a gift to yourself, or someone you love!

The following teas are all from The Chinese Tea Company (CTCo) and were all very much enjoyed by most attendees in varying degrees. Keep reading to find out about purchasing any of these. Pre-ordering now will aid my cash flow to bring in a full batch of CTCo teas ASAPTravtea.net

Red Heart leaf – Hong Xin varietal

Tie Guan Yin Red Heart – a very special oolong that comes prepacked in an 8gram bag that we steeped at least 4x and it still had Lots of life in it. We have this one priced on the website at $10.50 per 8gm.

Pricing is already on the site to pre-order any of these 3 as well:

Mo Gan Mountain Snow Buds; Anji Bai Cha, and Anji Bai Cha Aromatic Spiral – All of these were well received, especially the Aromatic Spiral. They are rare, small farm, small batch production from Spring 2024 harvests.

Chinese Tea Company website offers MANY more small farm teas that sound just as delicious as the 4 we tried. I want to put together a large order to save on shipping, and your input can help to make this happen. Pre-order (if you want the full size shown), or deposits toward a smaller portion. [A few customers have already indicated some that they would like to try small portions of, if we get enough interest.] If you comment on this post – others can see what you are interested in and it may help to encourage a group buy.

Visit the CTCo site ASAP, to review the other availalable teas; contact Kateri via email (info @ traveling-tea.com) or calling or texting the shop (314 647 8832).

IMPORTANT INFO: Prices are shown in British pounds on the site – if you add 40% to the price shown that should closely cover the exchange rate and sales tax. There will be very little markup if you are purchasing a full unit as shown – making this more of a co-op purchase. You are still getting a significant savings as you will not be paying for any shipping ($20-30 approx). (I do not yet know how it will be treated for customs.)

If full units are beyond your means or interest – tell me what teas and quantities you DO want; if there is enough interest to bring in a full unit I will take a deposit towards your purchase. [NOTE: if you are not purchasing a full unit, there will be some additional markup to cover handling and packaging, and a small profit)

RECAP: The greens and oolong that we sampled are available for pre-order on travtea.net – Additionally, there are many other quality teas available from Chinese Tea Co and You can help to bring them in, by visiting their site, make a list of your priorities and contact Kateri ASAP. All pre-orders and deposits must be completed by 10/1.

[Note; if you like ripe puerhs, we also have some Old Tea Tree from CTCo – please try it while we have it – I hope to get more of it as well]

LET’S SHARE MORE (REALLY) GOOD TEA!!

Do it Yourself Tea Calendar??

After comments and discussion regarding the lack of a tea calendar this year, I have figured out that I could create a “Do it Yourself” kit option utilizing our existing Trial Size packaging by providing a set of properly sized envelopes that you could pack yourself.

If I have more than 5 people express interest on this post by beginning of October I will order in the envelopes. Holiday teas will hopefully go live by 11/2.

DETAILS:

As I feel the element of surprise is integral to the experience, it would work great as a gift The actual tea packets would be similar to the gold packets in last year’s calendar. Even with selecting the teas yourself, you could still create an element of surprise by putting all the envelopes in a dish or container with no numbers on them and select an envelope at random each day.

1) you would select the 24 teas as “Trial/Travel Sizes” (out of our entire available catalog, it is looking like we will have around 14 special holiday tea flavors), Most of the teas will be around $1.50 each, some might be 1.25, and a few could be more, depending upon which teas you select.

2) the “kit” would consist of 24 outside envelopes to put each one of the tea sleeves into, and optional 24 numbered or logo stickers to seal the envelopes. [numbers, if YOU want to designate the sequence, or just a small logo or decorative sticker if sequence doesn’t matter). Guesstimating the price for the kit would be about $10

The inner tea sleeve will just be our normal Trial Sizes that we always offer, containing 2 teaspoons of tea (for a 16oz mug) with simply the name and water temp and minutes for steeping. No extra tea description or ingredients listing. It would not be colorful or fancy.

WHAT DO YOU THINK??

Thinking about Holiday Tea stocks, and a Drawing for FREE Tea

We have a number of holiday/seasonal teas that we only offer from November-December (into January if we don’t sell out). The last several years we had extra, limited edition flavors because of the Countdown to Christmas Tea Calendars.

Due to reduced interest last year and the incredible amount of extra work it takes (with planning starting in June/July) …… we are NOT offering a Tea Calendar this year.

However we are wondering: Are there Special Calendar Flavors you would like us to make available for your Holiday consumption and gifting??

The following is a list of tea flavors that were exclusively in the 2022 & 2023 calendars (with a few packages left over and sold in the shop). Please Vote for those that you would definitely purchase if we offer them. “GS” means it is Gluten safe

Champagne White Raspberry (aka Champagne Toast)
Chocolate Caramel Drizzle (not organic)
Chocolate Orange GS
Christmas Bonbon (partially organic)
Cinnamon Pear Coffeecake (Partially organic)
Coconut Gingersnap (caffeine-free) GS
Decaf Orange Spice (not organic)
Gingersnap (mostly organic) GS
Pear Spice GS
Spiced Candycane (Partially organic)
Spiced Snow GS
Sugar Cookie (caffeine-free) GS
Sugar Plum Pudding GS
Vanilla Snow GS
Winter Solstice (caffeine-free) GS

VOTE by Commenting on this Post (tell us your top 2 or 3 choices) – Voters will get their name in a drawing for 2oz of Free Holiday tea of choice*.

Kateri needs to make final decisions before the last week of September. A tea Must have MORE THAN 6 people interested in it or we may not offer it this year {you can also let us know when/if you visit the shop in the next 2 weeks]
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE!!

*Contestants limited to registered customers, as Winners will be contacted via information we have on file (email and/or phone). Tea will be awarded in Late October or November when all holiday teas are in stock. Prize is limited to selection from available tea flavors.

Sharing Good Times… Sharing Good Tea…