Thursday, April 2, 2009

Tea

I'm looking for a place in the Willamette Valley (Oregon) to procure reasonably priced Green Tea.
Specifically, loose OP (orange pekoe), fair-trade, organic, not pressed or balled (gunpowder) and with no additional flavors. Just plain ol' wrinkly green tea.

A note on tea (thanks to Alton Brown of Good Eats on Food Network) -
Types of tea:
Orange Pekoe - whole leaves
Broken Orange Pekoe - large broken chunks of whole leaves
Fannings - tiny bits
Dust - dust, bad stuff

The problem with tea, the more it is broken down the more surface area is exposed and the quicker the bitter flavors are released. Most bagged tea is dust and fannings. You can't go wrong if you start with whole loose leaf tea.

The only place I've found to get what I like is the Boise Co-Op in Boise Idaho.
The long term plan is to go to onegreeworld.com (in Molalla OR) and buy a Sochi Tea bush (if I remember right, Sochi is some Russian town or something near China - anyhow the point is that the plant is cold weather tolerant).

EDIT

This is the BEST damn green tea:
http://www.rishi-tea.com/store/jade-cloud-aka-green-jade-organic-fair-trade-green-tea.html

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