Category Archives: News

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!!

London 2024 – 4th Installment – Tea Stop #3 – Mei Leaf Tea

As many of you know – sourcing quality post-fermented teas – like puerhs and hei cha (dark tea) has been an ongoing challenge for me. Occasionally I have been able to get some special teas from my friend Eric (Fragrant Cup) who is most knowledgeable in the area of Chinese teas. So, I asked him if he had any suggestions for London shops and he turned me on to two that I got to visit, and intend to source from going forward, and I hope will have finally resolved our post-fermented tea “shortage”.

The first is Mei Leaf tea. They do sell retail online, so some of you may have heard of them before. What I focused on from them this time is more yellow teas and some “puerhs”. Because I was able to sign up for wholesale terms I was able to bring in more from here than most of my other stops. I have not yet had an opportunity to personally try much of what I bought. I did enjoy a glass of iced purple leaf tea during my shopping excursion. It was quite refreshing, but not significantly different than anything we currently offer.


Available now in shop and online: GABA Oolong, 2 of the 3 Yellow teas, a couple of Puerh bings (White Shou and a Sheng), and a really cool glass tea brewer (8oz)

Amber GABA Oolong – organic oolong version that we have not offered for a couple of years. Tea researchers discovered that by exposing tea to nitrogen during the oxidization process brings forth the naturally occurring (gamma-aminobutyric acid) GABA amino acid compounds in tea. GABA is a natural chemical produced in the brain that relaxes the nervous system and reduces anxiety. When we offered this in the past, some customers reported that it did help them with migraines and general relaxation.

Cleveland  Clinic article about GABA https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22857-gamma-aminobutyric-acid-gaba

” GABA is present in some fermented foods, including kimchi, miso and tempeh. It’s also found in green, black and oolong tea. Other foods that contain GABA or boost its production in your body include brown rice, soy and adzuki beans, chestnuts, mushrooms, tomatoes, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, sprouted grains and sweet potatoes. ….. Like supplements, it’s not fully clear if eating GABA-containing foods allows GABA to reach your brain. More studies, with large numbers of people, need to be conducted.”

Yellow tea is very rare. Originally only available in China, it was considered a gift or tribute tea to the Emperor. As you may now know, Great Mississippi Tea Company is successfully producing a yellow tea as well {we are currently sold out on our stock}

We are offering 3 versions of yellow tea – try one, try all three and see what differences you note!

The Mei Leaf website offers a wealth of educational information, and we will be exploring and learning together! 

If you browse and find teas you would like us to offer in the future, please let me know. Here is a link to a great video describing essential info about tea production (about an hour long)

Your comments and questions are welcome here!

Next installment Tea Stop #4 – Postcard Teas

London 2024 – 3rd Installment – Tea Stop #2

Mariage Frère [If you go, time your visit to be there after Noon so you get to try their fancy tea-based drinks and/or food, that I missed out on]

This tea shop has been a Paris institution since 1854 and I know that several of our customers have purchased tea from them – either in person or online. When I discovered they had opened a shop in London’s Covent Garden area I knew I had to add it to my visiting list.

It did not occur to me to take photos inside the shop until too late – this installment documentary was an idea that arose after I started to put my thoughts and tea experience in writing

The shop is huge, and opulent and everything is very accessible. Every tea has a 100gm tin that can be opened and sniffed. They have looseleaf and teabag versions of nearly every tea, though some newer or special flavors seem to only be in teabag format. Where to start? We have a fraction of their volume and new customers can be overwhelmed coming into our shop!

I explained to the gentleman who greeted me that I have a tea shop in America and I wanted to bring back something special for my customers. He steered me directly to Marco Polo as a blend that is popular with Americans. I had certainly heard of it before.

Described on their website as:

Wonderfully fruity & flowery fragrant black tea

And: Our overwhelming success is a mysterious blend that will take you to distant lands and unforeseen territories.

Fragrances evoking Chinese and Tibetan flowers lend it a uniquely velvety taste.

Its extraordinary bouquet makes Marco Polo the most legendary of flavoured teas. 

And that is It.

No ingredient list – I had asked him about ingredients before I left and he assured me I could find them on the website. If you have more experience with this please let me know, but I looked high and low and with every search term I could think of, with no success. Are allergies not a big deal in Paris?

The best I could find, on every tea item I viewed:

For better or worse, this is the only tea I purchased. I did bring back about 20 ounces of both the black and green tea versions of the blend and they are Now available for purchase in shop & on the website in 1oz and 2oz packages only, plus a handful of trial sizes. The only decaf version they had was rooibos based. They had no other decaf blends that were not rooibos based. [To my dedicated decaf customers, I’m sorry, I tried]. I haven’t yet tried the green tea version but both are quite fragrant, and the black version is quite tasty!

Next installment Tea Stop #3