I am an avid tea drinker. Both my tongue and tummy do not like coffee very much but I go through a pot of tea every day. Between Colleen and I, we can easily down four or five pots on a rainy Saturday. Our standard tea for some time now has been Upton Tea‘s Blue Flower Earl Grey. It has just the right level of bergomot for us and is pretty to boot. We buy it by the kilo (that’s about 2 lbs. for the metrically-challenged). We have also become addicted to our favorite herbal, also sold by Upton, called Chamillo.
We drink so much of our standards that I sometimes forget about all of the other great tea out there that I love. I used to buy 5-10 samples a month from Upton as I learned my way around the tea world. I also have some favorites that are not the direct bulk teas I get at Upton’s that I had totally forgotten about. A few days ago I was digging around in a cabinet and came across a tin of brown sugar. I had used an old tea tin for it. The tin was for Kusmi’s Prince Vladimir tea. I immediately set out to find it again and looking through the web I remembered that I used to order it from the local Baltimore Coffee and Tea Company. I steered my way to their site and was happy to see they still sold it (it has to be 5 years since I last bought it.) Then I remembered another favorite that is a local tea from the Eastern Shore Tea Company and added a bulk bag of their Black Raven, the best black current tea I’ve encountered.
So, anyway, I am now sipping my first cup of Kusmi in a long time and recommend all of these to anyone who is looking for some new teas to try out. These are all flavored black teas except the Chamillo which has no tea and is a tisane. Maybe at some point I will get around to listing out some of my favorite straight black and green teas. Mmm.
RockTreeSky 