Tea quality and the current market
The current state
The current state of the market for Chinese teas in western countries is charactorised by a low awareness of quality as a differentiator within a tea type or of how to distinguish or understand value in terms of quality for a given price.
Understanding of loose leaf teas
There is a growing understanding that loose teas are generally of better quality then tea bags. However the distinctions in packaging and storage of loose leaf teas to preserve quality is not appreciated as evidenced by :
- Most of the packaged loose leaf teas currently on the market are not adequately packaged in air tight bags or containers.
- These loose leaf teas are continuously exposed to moisture in the air, high temperature and odors from surrounding products.
A good proportion of tea bags on the market are made of low quality tea dust to the effect that it is hard to distinguish whether it is fresh or not.
Valley Green Tea quality assurance
At Valley Green Tea, we:
- Import all teas from their original producing regions, eg Tie Guan Yin from the Anxi area of the FuJian Province and Long Jing from the Zhejiang Province.
- Import teas that are seasonally produced for those to be consumed fresh: green tea, white tea, yellow tea, black tea and jasmine tea.
- We use the latest techniques for storing high quality fresh loose leaf teas - vacuum seal, refrigeration and small satchel packaging. The small satchel packaging (10-25g) allows teas to be consumed gradually without exposing the unopened satchels unnecessarily. We also air transported our teas to Australia to minimize the time of un-refrigerated storage.
- We import aged teas for those to be consumed when aged: aged white tea and Pu-erh tea.
