Whole Leaf vs. Tea Bags
Tea Bags - Who hasn't had tea from a tea bag at some point in their life? Don't feel embarrassed if you used to feel completely satisfied with a cup of Tetley's or Lipton with a splash of milk and two lumps of sugar. It's all we knew!
Just like you thought Kool-Aid was great until that first ice cold glass of fresh-sqeezed orange juice...you could never go back.
Back to tea bags. While there is an ever increasing variety of tea bags in the market today, including organic and loose, full leaf tea, generally tea bags contain what are called "fannings". Fannings are essentially the next step up from "dust"; the bottom of the barrel. Fannings are often stale, contain dust mites, and are naturally a low grade of tea. Usually this tea is machine processed, resulting in bitter, astringent tea, as well.
Even at their best, when filled with a high grade loose leaf tea, a tea bag can only expand so far and hence the leaves do not get to infuse to their fullest and release their bounty of flavors.
Which brings us to Loose Leaf:
Loose Leaf Tea - Generally a much, much higher grade than fannings. While there are many grades of loose leaf teas - in fact each variety of loose leaf tea has numerous grades. Zhi tastes hundreds of samples to arrive at the most flavorful - all within the highest possible grades of organically grown tea. Our tea at Zhi is hand-picked (by happy, healthy workers)
Loose leaf tea, especially WHOLE loose leaf tea, can be infused several times. Yes, that is right. Don't throw those used leaves away until they are done! The second and third steeping (up to many more steepings with several oolongs and pu-erhs) reveal different flavor profiles - some flavors which were subtle in the first steeping emerge as others become less pronounced.
All this said, this doesn't mean that Zhi Tea will never sell bagged tea. However, we certainly aren't in any hurry to do so. Especially now that we are totally hooked on the Magic Tea Maker!
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