Noteworthy Tea Merchants

In my endless researches into the world of tea I find myself clicking through to many tea merchant web sites. Many of them, quite frankly, are not sufficiently interesting to merit a return visit.

While I don't mean to be snippy about it or to denigrate anyone's efforts when it comes to bringing tea to the masses, I would put forth the notion - as some others have done - that to succeed in the tea market these days you have to find a way to make yourself stand out from the pack. In my somewhat informed opinion the way to do this is not to cobble together a seemingly random assortment of tea and teaware, add an e-commerce site and go for it.

With that in mind, here are a few sites I've run across lately who seem to be on the right track with this sort of thing. This is not a heavily researched investigation, but rather just a few merchants I've run across lately who stood out from the pack.

Dao Tea
Specializing in "exceptional, very rare teas" Dao Tea sources their products "directly from farmers who own micro-estates." I haven't tried any of their tea but it sounds like an interesting notion.

JagaSilk
Describing themselves as "specialty importers of maccha green tea and its tools," Jagasilk are hardly the first to go down this road. But with the increasing popularity of the powdered green tea known as maccha or matcha, they might be onto something

Fusion Tea Room
It's all about the herbal tea at Fusion Tea Room, where they claim to "specialize in Rooibos Tea, Honeybush Tea, Yerba Mate Tea, Tulsi Tea and Fruit Tisanes."

Image: JagaSilk

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