Loose Leaf Tea

Loose leaf tea is tea sold as whole leaves or large pieces of leaf, not the fine dust and fannings found in many tea bags. With room to move, the leaf opens fully in the water, and most leaf tea can be steeped more than once. Here is all our loose leaf tea from China, Japan and Taiwan in one place, with the teas people buy most shown first.

Every true tea comes from one plant, Camellia sinensis, and processing sets the styles apart. White tea is handled the least. Green tea and rare yellow tea are close kin: yellow starts out like green, then takes one extra step. Oolong sits between green and black tea. Pu-erh comes raw as sheng or ripe as shu, and hei cha covers the other dark teas, changed by slow microbial fermentation and often pressed and aged. Matcha, from Japan, is the one tea here sold as a powder, whisked rather than steeped.