For years I’ve drank so much coffee, at 10 years old at least 2 or 3 cups a day for years. Then I quit, haven’t had any for a couple years. But now I watch films from England or France Europe anyway and today I picked up some tea before lunch. When I was in the store I saw so many different flavors so I’m asking now what flavors you prefer?

kv

 

I was raised British and the tea of choice was Pekoe tips, from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) , I think is still available.
My drink of choice now is Coffee!

 

Long Island.

 

I am on gunpowder green tea because the caffeine in black tea was bothering me.

 

I am on gunpowder green tea because the caffeine in black tea was bothering me.

I did buy the Green Tea, didn’t know they had gunpowder.

Sip Boooooom lol

kv

 

Yorkshire tea is what we have at home and at work (despite the Yorkshire/Lincolnshire north/south of the Humber rivalry). We buy the 1080-tea-bag pack.
I'd also recommend https://www.vahdam.global/ especially their assam, and assam chai.

 

I drink Puehrs, Blacks(actually red), Oolongs, Whites, and a few Green teas that I import from china. All naturally handpicked and not sawed off the plant with hedge trimmers like most tea plantations. Of each type there are many varieties and coming from china also many counterfeits. So, you need to know who you are buying from. Some of my favorites, that are easily obtained, are for Green tea is Longjing Dragon Well. Which is also the most popular tea in china. Oolong is Tie Guanyin varietals and the "Rock" Oolongs. Black is the various Yunnan Blacks. White are the various White Beauty varieties. I'll leave you to judge on your own the various "Sheng" raw processed and "Shu" cooked processed Puehrs. For any, the key is quality wich can vary greatly and often misrepresented counterfeits. There is a LOT of low quality "BAD" tea for sale to ignorant foriegners. I think the keep the good tea for consumption and sell the bad tea to anyone who is unknowingly foolish to buy it. But, higher quality tea can get expensive and as I said before, often counterfeited.

All tea comes from only 2 varieties of Camelia plants. Camelia Sinensis var. sinensis and Camelia Sinensis var. assamica. What makes them different teas is the soil and climate they grow in and how they are processed. The English notoriously and illegally went to china and obtained tea seeds and plants along with Chinese men who knew how to process the leaves into tea and built tea plantations in their India and Ceylon colonies. Not to mention their involvement in the highly illegal opium trade for tea in china. For a jolly good book on the history of how the English got into the tea business read any of Robert Fortunes autobiographical adventure books about his escapades in China obtaining plants and tea men.

 

Wow so many contributions didn’t know so many of you know so much about tea. I’m glad I asked.

kv

 

For grocery store teas it's hard to wrong with Twinings and Bigelow teas. Particularly Earl Grey and Constant Comment. Both mixed and flavored teas but very good nonetheless. A decent US online tea vendor is Harney & Sons Fine Teas which I do some business with rarely. Sadly my longtime favorite SpeacialTeas.com was bought out by Starbucks to "upgrade" by merging it into their Teavana presence in malls and butchered the company by removing them from competition with Teavana. Then there is a myriad of online import tea vendors selling chinese tea. The prices have increased drastically in the last 20 years as well as scammers selling counterfeits. One that I do business with (and they do sell counterfeits so buyer beware) is CIFbuy.com. I'll buy onesies from them and IF I like it then I'll do an online search to see who can beat their price. Usually on eBay and have found vendors selling it for less that were actuall shills for CIFbuy selling under a different name but still the same folks. Buying chinese tea is tricky game but can have very exciting results.

 

I recall shopping in Twining's in my young days, the tea used to come straight from the British crown colony of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in plywood chests.

 

For daily use I prefer Lipton Yellow Label. When I can get it I like the premium class Oolong teas from TenRen Tea Company.