Cultivar #18, Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan
Dragonwell harvest, Pan'an, Zhejiang
Dragonwell, awaiting pan-roasting, Pan'an, Zhejiang
Wuyi crafting, Wuyi Shan, Fujian
Initial drying with charcoal fire, Wuyi Shan, Fujian
Master ceramicist Xu De Jia, Yingge, Taiwan
Shaping a lid on a Zisha teapot, Dingshan, Jiangsu
Afternoon mist, Alishan, Taiwan
The end of the harvest day, Alishan, Taiwan
About Us & Our Teas visit us & contact
Red Blossom Tea Company is first and foremost a family owned tea shop in San Francisco's Chinatown, but we are also much more. We are direct importers, traveling thousands of miles in search of rare teas and artisan tea ware. We are educators, striving to bring the richness of traditional tea culture to our customers. And most importantly, we are tea lovers. We love to drink tea, talk tea, think tea and even obsess over tea.
How We Get Our Teas
We acquire our teas and teawares from a community of growers and artisans at origin. Each year, we schedule our annual buying trip to coincide with the Spring tea harvest. For green and white teas, this means we are usually in Fujian, Anhui, and Zhejiang from late March through mid-April. For oolongs, we are in Taiwan, Anxi, Wuyi and Chaozhou from mid-April through May.
Our sourcing trips also take us to areas of Yunnan, Guangdong, and Jiangsu, and for Winter teas, we’re usually in Taiwan in November.
We recognize that this is a more expensive way to run a tea business and that it would be easier to work through distributors or make purchases through large tea markets. But we feel that the effort we make allows us to offer higher quality teas and teawares.
Our Dedication to Quality
We specialize in traditionally crafted loose leaf teas and we're able to acquire the very best. Our teas trace back to the tea gardens and to the very hands that crafted them, often using time honored methods passed down from one generation to the next.
If a particular tea is best grown at higher elevations, we'll find the highest mountain garden we can. If a particular tea is best roasted with charcoal, we'll not only find the roaster, but also insist on the exact fruitwood charcoal to use. Yes, you could say we're a little obsessed, but we take pride in what we do, and we strive to do it well. So we'll save you the health pitch and the mystical tales. Instead, we just have really good teas.
