I’m one of the few people I know in this world who doesn’t like and doesn’t drink coffee.  I’m a tea drinker and have been ever since I can remember.  I’ve always been a little bit jealous of all the different kinds of coffee drinks offered at the coffee shops and thought I was relegated to buying bagged tea at the grocery store.  Now I have found some tea bags that I love and just about any Republic of Tea brew will sit at the top of that list, but I have recently been enlightened by the world of loose leaf teas.

I’m sad to say that my foray into enlightenment came from a trip to the mall - but it’s true. Teavana, meaning heaven of tea, is a chain store* that aims to be part tea bar and part tea emporium and seeks to introduce people to all of the wonderful health benefits tea has to offer.  The store itself seems relatively organic with shelves full of Asian inspired tea pots (cast iron, porcelain, china and glass), tea accessories (including some food!) and 6-7 types of delicious tea samples (FREE, although you can also buy larger servings of tea).

The sales associates are seemingly the best educated retail sales associates I’ve ever met - I made the mistake of asking for caffeine-free tea suggestions and was given a short lesson on why “caffeine-free” is a misnomer (only over processed teas are truly caffeine-free but the processing removes much of the health benefit and while herbal teas are caffeine free they don’t actually include tea leaves).  If it weren’t for its location in a mall and the excellent branding materials I probably would have assumed it was one of a kind.

While I do pretty much love every little thing about Teavana I feel I need to issue a warning:  It is all too easy to get sucked in and wind up spending a lot of money.  The minimum purchase for all teas is 2 oz and this unit price ranges from $4.00 for this Masala Chai Tea (this is on my next to purchase list) - $25.00 for this Monkey Picked Oolong; It doesn’t sound like much but 2 oz will actually yield 25-30 8 oz cups.  But,

• they definitely try to push a one pound purchase because you get a 10% “bulk” discount - I’d like to meet the person who shells out $200 at one time for a whole pound of Monkey Picked Oolong.  DO NOT BE SWAYED, at least not into buying one pound of one type of tea; They say the tea is only good for 1 year if optimally stored and this means 200 - 240 cups - that’s a lot of oolong.  On the plus side, you can buy any combination of teas that adds up to one pound and still receive the discount and you can even combine your purchase with friends.

But they are a retail store as I learned in my college economics class “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

• You have to purchase containers for the tea separately!  For optimum freshness they recommend you store your tea in an air tight canister.  I’m not sure if you can actually get out of the store without buying one (I didn’t really try that hard) but this seemed to be the hardest sale they push.  The cheapest, most economical canister is the generic Teavana 1 lb tin for $7.00, but don’t worry you don’t have to fill it - these are the tins I’ve purchased and I only buy about 4 oz at a time.  They have smaller and cheaper versions of the same tin online but there was no mention of these in the store.  But much more alluring are their decorative tins which start at $8.95 for a 3 oz size.  Looking back, I maybe should have actually gone with one of the smaller tins since I’m not likely to buy more than a few ounces at a time anyway and even though they’re more expensive the tins are reusable and they do encourage you to bring them back to refill your tea or try a new one.  Plus the big tins take up quite a bit of space (I only have room for 2 of the 3 canisters I currently have) and I like to have a variety of teas to choose from. I think my next trip to the store might include a question about a trade in.

I’ve never done a formal review like this, but I thought I’d give it a shot because I wanted to introduce you to the newest item added to my wish list: The Gourmet Tea Maker

Doesn’t it look pretty?  It’s quite expensive, probably the most expensive non-furniture item on my wish list, but it is oh-so-cool!

I know, at first glance it looks like a spiffy coffee maker and like many generic coffee makers it is fully digital and has a 24 hour programable starter (which is perfect for someone like me who won’t even wake up early enough to eat breakfast let alone a quality cup of tea) and has a hot plate to keep the tea warm after it has been brewed.  But the awesomeness is in the details.  It comes with 8 different settings of different brewing temperatures and infusing times that will cover all types of tea and has an optional 2nd infusion feature - you don’t get that with a coffee maker!

Overall it seems there are more positive than negative reviews of the tea maker - but the negative reviews are consistent and are enough to make me hesitant to drop so much money (even if we did have the money to spend right now).

1. The hot plate has an auto shut-off after 30 minutes and is not adjustable.
2. Of the 8 settings there are actually only two temperature settings while the infusing time is a bit more variable.  I don’t know a whole lot about teas but it sounds like temperature and brewing time are equally important.  See Teavana’s brewing chart here.

Realistically, this is not something I need right now but I’m just so excited that tea is starting to catch up with coffee, commercially at least.  And maybe if I wait long enough the makers of the Gourmet Tea Maker will make a couple seemingly necessary adjustments to their machine.

Side items:

*I don’t actually have a problem with chain stores - I love Target, Lowe’s, The Limited and all kinds of other chain stores, but I also do my best to support local businesses so I have full intensions on investigating Tea Drops in Westport and I promise to follow up with a comparison.

In addition to supporting local businesses, I do also try to find and support any business that donates charitably.  Throughout Dustin’s course of study in African literature and environmental criticism I’ve become increasingly aware of the negative impact things like oil, coffee, tea, chocolate, banana etc. harvesting can have on the regions they come from - not because it is necessarily bad for that region (although often it is that too) but because the work conditions are often poor and the enormous profit that comes from this export only makes it as far as the big government officials.  Teavana is aware of the impact tea production has on its communities and donates 1% of their annual profit to CARE, a humanitarian organization working to fight global poverty.  While maybe not ideal (I’m not sure what Teavana’s annual profits are, but 1% doesn’t seem like very much when that profit pretty much relies on the work done by the tea farmers in the first place) at the very least it’s a step in the right direction.  What I would like to know is why Teavana does not seem to be making strides in buying fair trade teas as well.  Tea Drops web page is not nearly as extensive as Teavana’s, so I can’t say with certainty that they don’t buy fair trade tea’s either, but my impression is that if any good is fair trade, it’s not kept secret.

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