There was a thread a while back... but I could not find it through searching... in whihc people recommneded (I believe) good places to order on line extremely high quality tea. I don't remember if that included green tea... but I want to find stuff that is high quality that I can brew myself... like stuff coming from China.

Can anyone recommend links to good tea sites?

Also, as many people have pointed out on many threads. there is a gag factor with respect to green tea.

A friend of mine has just turned me on to the possibility of Rooibos (http://www.kalahariusa.com/tea), a fruity tasting herbal tea that has a lot of properties similar to green tea. He combines the Rooibos, which he orders from the site on the link with green tea, though it is just a commercial green tea in the store. My understanding is that unless the process is very careful, a lot of the advantages of green tea are lost.

What do people think?

So I know this is a dual purpose thread but any thoughts on one or the other or both queries would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there,

I am from South Africa and I only drink Rooibos (which means red bush BTW) and green tea. Rooibos is from SA and very popular here.

I normally have one or two cups of rooibos a day and anywhere between three and ten cups of green tea a day. On weekends I just brew a pot of green tea and keep topping it up with water.

The trick with any tea is not to use boiling water when making it as this destroys the antioxidants in the teas. Just boil the kettle and leave it for a couple of minutes to cool slightly and then then make your tea.

Hope this helps...

My husband and I visited this (http://www.redblossomtea.com/)tea store in Chinatown, San Francisco. It's run by a young brother and sister, second generation Chinese, they took over the store from their parents. They stock authentic chinese tea.
I was just shopping yesterday in King of Prussia, Philadelphia, PA and was in this (http://www.teavana.com/)store, where I tried the tea you're referring to. It was very good. I think both sites have online ordering.

After doing my usual compulsive research, learning about how carefully green tea has to be processed not to lose its medicinal properties and that there is a lot of "fake" green tea out there, I decided that the two following sites seemed trustworthy. In particular, they state the season the tea has been harvested. Apparently, the tea loses most of its medicinal capabilities in 6 -12 months.

Right now is the Spring 2006 season.

I ordered from the first link... but I am beginning to think the second one might be even better:


Golden Tea House (http://www.goldenteahouse.com/index.php)

What convinced me about the one above is that it is selling last year's crop at 40% off. I presume that it means its customers are very discriminating.


Tea Spring.com (http://www.teaspring.com/)

What convinced me of the quality of this site is that it, too, advertised spring '06 cuttings but for more different teas than the first site.

Both sites have a wealth of information on storing, brewing, etc. on the various teas.

SO now I am starting to research Rooibos tea. It is herbal, from South Africa, as Preach posted (he should know, he is from South Africa :) )

However there is a difference between fermented (which is red) and unfermented (which is green) and apparently the unfermented is higher in antioxidants. But my guess is that it may not be worth the taste. The green version however is supposed to have more antioxidants than Chinese Green Tea...:p

Below is what I got for Rooibos tea.

I learned that Rooibos tea is graded and the best is super grade, though most Rooibos is graded that. They are now selling organically grown Rooibos, which has been certified. I found only one company that lists it's product as both super grade and organic:

Cape Rooibos Organic (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BYOACE/102-3034956-6719366?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=3370831)

The link is to the cheapest price I found, which was on Amazon, which was cheaper even allowing for the exorbitant shipping costs.

Of course, always remember to go through John's main JSF web page to get to Amazon, so that JSF gets a little bit of a kick-back for the flow through customers.