The teas arrived from Upton Tea Imports, Massachusetts. They say this state has once again overtaken California in technological development, but that has nothing to do with tea. Three demo sets (samplers) arrived, with 4 teas in each: English Blend Sampler, Ceylon Sampler, and Introduction to Oolong Teas. It wasn’t exactly cheap—70 dollars including delivery, which comes to 20 dollars per 100 grams—the price of very fancy tea, whereas I ordered ordinary ones. It’s all because I ordered samplers and because of the delivery.Thanks for pointing me to the shop go to an unknown commenter from Leprosorium; on my own, I found only the little-known www.grandtea.com, which will be the next place I order from.
My sister asked me why I do this at all. Here’s my answer. (Good grief, when did I start copying Exler’s turns of phrase?) How else can I be certain of buying good tea, so I can set myself a quality benchmark and adopt a snobbish standard? Upton Tea Imports is clearly an excellent shop, judging by all the indirect signs. We don’t have any specialist shops here in Daugavpils, and I don’t trust the locals anyway. There are surely some in Riga, but I’d have to go there and search, and again, I don’t trust them—in Latvia, much of the service and retail sector is still Soviet. In some places it’s better than in Russia, in others worse. Look at Grishkovets: at Riga Airport they smashed his bottles; at least afterward the vice president apologized.