Buying Bulk Tea from the US

Cuisine Food & Drink
1

Hi,

I used to have a tea source from Taiwan (in addition to occasionally going) where we had a farm that produced tea and we used to get it very cheap, something like $30US a bag. The tea is average-to-good using Taiwan standards, and really good using US standards. I know those assessments are subjective, but that’s all I got. Basically I have paid $90 for stuff online that is not even close to what the $30 “everyday tea” costs.

Now my source is dried up and I won’t be going to Taiwan for a long time, if ever again. I’m hoping to be able to find a comparable product at a comparable price. I know shipping isn’t free and of course I’m ok with that. But I want to buy something like 5 pounds of tea at a time so I can minimize the shipping costs and do this very infrequently. I know the right answer would be to find someone who lives there and have them send me something, but that’s not real likely.

Thanks for any help or direction anyone can give in this.

Norm

2

You’d have to drink a lot of tea to go through five pounds before optimal use-by dates. But it’s an interesting question.

The Taiwan-based Ten-Ren tenren.com/index.html has stores in the U.S. and also offers shipping.

Another place to check unless someone comes up with something easier and more direct would be this list trade.coa.gov.tw/eng_web/supplier_list.jsp?cid=2

3

mmmm. Isn’t taking tea to Asia kinda like taking a date to Thailand? or perhaps a Mos burger to McDonald’s? Just pondering the implications.

4

Double Post Sorry. It probably wasn’t reading the first time and you probably don’t want to see it twice, - - so deleted.

5

[quote=“normZurawski”]Hi,
I used to have a tea source from Taiwan (in addition to occasionally going) where we had a farm that produced tea and we used to get it very cheap, something like $30US a bag. [/quote]

How big were these bags? One ‘jin’ (~600gm)? Tea is usually packed here in 1 or 1/2 jin bags. Anyways, $1000NT/$30USD is an average price for cheap tea, but do you know exactly what type of tea you were getting? I’m guessing oolong, but what kind? Where was this farm? There’s a big difference in taste between different varieties, processing, and regions.

6

You could try Ashley, a foreigner in Taichung. He has started a tea business. I haven’t tasted any of it, but it’s worth giving it a try.

innofarmer-tea.weebly.com/