Obtaining Tea Supplies

Each chapter details information about Tea Tavern vendors and how they work towards tavern goals.

The Phoenix Collection

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
     - Teas that age well are the specialty
     - Fresher teas are hit or miss, but one can tell they are most are a higher quality.
- [x] Is the tea likely to be healthy?
    - Likely, though little information is generally given to prove this.

How goals are aligned

David Lee Hoffman is the owner of The Phoenix Collection, where we wholesale teas such the 1995 "Green Pu'erh" and Aini Bamboo Shu (2014). He was one of, if not the, first Americans to go to and source tea from China. In the documentary All in this Tea, people can see the attention to quality through his telling of how tea smelled, how tea tasted, and what was used to grow the tea (ex. organic fertilization). He even cared about the lives of the farmers and their ability to sell tea without requiring a factory as the middle-man. Something that may have helped the growth of two other vendors: West China Tea and Grass People Tree.

West China Tea

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
- [x] Is the tea likely to be healthy?

How goals are aligned?

West China Tea's owner is the the TeaHouseGhost (So-Han Fan). Having gone to China themselves, West China Tea sources teas directly from farmers who care about organic, healthful farming of tea. They provide some of the most in-depth and informational educational content as a course and for free. They built a vibrant community of tea drinkers at their establishment in Austin, Texas, converting people who may have previously avoided tea into people who seek out quality tea.
They supply the Tea Tavern with teas such as Moonlight White tea bings, Ancient Black Rain tea coins, and Black Phoenix.

Grass People Tree (GPT)

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
- [x] Is the tea likely to be healthy?

How goals are aligned?

The Tea Tavern's keeper occasionally speaks with Rui, the owner of Grass People Tree and found a genuine passion in her for tea as an art, as a medicine, and it's traditions. Based on her educational content and blog postings, the Tea Tavern finds that the ecosystem they grow tea from, the people they work with to craft their products, and the process in which they use to make their teas are perhaps honored more than the tea that they sell, itself. 
The teas that they sell are all from wild and ancient trees. The leaves are processed in a much more careful  and special manner, as to prevent qualities that would make them bitter. As a result, people can be sure that the plants they use are healthy, that all the health benefiting substances in tea are at their strongest, and that there won't be any additional substances that can result in harming a person's health. This results in a tea that is unlike any other that the Tea Tavern finds in that the brews almost never becomes bitter...
Even when accidentally leaving Master's Green brewing in boiling water for a minute or two.  (^^;)7 
This proves that GPT tea is also difficult to brew in a way that would makes the tea's brew unpleasant to most people.
Further, Rui takes care of her employees by helping the "sisters" who pick and pack tea. This is done though obtain funding to help the sisters progress their personal goals, such as learn English. Rui communicates directly with many of the wholesale vendors, visits many of their tea houses as she travels, and  is one of the most welcoming and helpful people in the world's tea community. 
As a result, GPT is the partner supplying us with the teas found in the Wild Tea Sampler. (^-^)

Tea Curious

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
- [x] Is the tea likely to be healthy?

How goals are aligned

Tea Curious sources teas from primarily Taiwan and Napal, however they also have teas from other places like China. The organization was founded by Steven and Rie who went to various parts of the world to learn how to find and make quality tea. They have a passion for high quality tea, community, and a scientific degree of attention to brewing. 
Tea Curious teas have the most details recorded about their teas compared to all of the Tea Tavern's other vendors, including what degree of organic that the farm grew the tea in (wild, low intervention, organic certified, working on certification, etc..). The attention to detail also stretches into their water, as they are the organization that the Tea Tavern wholesales tea water minerals from, and thus are the ones who made the recipe that the tavern uses for tea water.. 
Thanks to the teachings of these water wizards, the Tea Tavern was able to move from "ok" tea to "the finest of teas".

Mei Leaf Tea

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
- [ ] Is the tea likely to be healthy?

How goals are aligned if...

The Tea Tastes Good

Mei Leaf Tea, as a brand, has made itself stand out as the vendor of "pinnacle" tea, as it pertains to flavor. Numerous daily gongfu, Chinese tea drinkers strongly recommended that the Tea Tavern work with them as a wholesale vendor, and the reasoning makes sense. One only needs to browse the Mei Leaf tea YouTube videos to see how they are passionate and effective at teaching people about tea and finding only the finest tasting versions of those teas (to the owner's taste, of course). They have scouts go out to Chinese tea farms, funnel thousands of teas down to a select few hundred that they ship samples of to the Mei Leaf, which then go through taste testing with the owner to decide on a select few teas that they decide are the "pinnacle" of the particular type of tea. 
Mei Leaf Tea is actually a prime example of why the Tea Tavern likes to work with wholesalers. Yes, the price is higher for working with them, but our vendors go through significant efforts that are more immediately capable of supporting the goals of the Tea Tavern.

This being said, the owner has mentioned these teas are cultivated from, are likely to have non-marketed traits, like being organic. Many of the teas they source are likely to be sold with or without any kind of evidence of things like organic farming and there is good reason to believe it. This being the case, however, means that when wholesaling from Mei Leaf, the focus is in the quality of the flavor above all else.


Mosscap Tea

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
- [x] Is the tea likely to be healthy?

How goals are aligned 

Mosscap Tea is run by herbalists passionate about farming to the most naturally beneficial extent possible. They have helped the Tea Tavern in researching the organic certification, its pitfalls, and how to farm to a level of "organic" that the certification does not assure. Due to their depth of knowledge and skill in making tasteful herbal mixtures, the Tea Tavern works with them to wholesale blends of herbs that are mostly grown from small farms local to Texas.
Teas from "Mosscap" is in the name of all the products that the Tea Tavern wholesales from them, such as The Mosscap Hearth and Rain of a Mosscap.

Sacred Blossom Farm

Which goals align?

Since the Tea Tavern's goal is to help people achieve a better, healthier life, what are the priorities that the organization's goal align with?

- [x] Does it taste good to people who enjoy high quality tea?
- [x] Is the tea likely to be healthy?

How goals are aligned

Sacred Blossom Farm is a Wisconsin herb farm that advertises restorative and low-intervention (or "low-input") farming practices to grow herbs, as well as a degree of foraging for some wild grown herbs. Their focus is on selling the finest tasting herbs with the healthiest plants they can produce, to provide the healthiest and most medicinally effective herbal blends that they can.
An example of the herbal blend that the Tea Tavern wholesales from them is Sacred Blossom Immunity.