If they grew tea in the Garden in prelapsarian times, it would have been like this.
This tea is unforgivingly expensive; I mainly purchased it because it had effective “seals of approval” from both Tea For Me Please and Lazy Literatus’s blogs. Combining that with the effective minefield that is shopping for DHP as a relatively new westerner, and you’re ripe to overpay for something that isn’t at all as advertised.
So I figured that it was worth paying a lot for one session that would tell me what it is I should actually be seeking from DHP. And this tea delivered that in spades.
That being said, if reordering purely for pleasure, I’d do the Tie Luo Han every time. This was probably a hairsbreadth the superior tea – but to the tune of almost 4× the price? Not hardly.
To be clear though, I consider this more a sign of what a stonkeringly good deal the TLH is that this being overpriced. This is fully handmade, and something that you can’t really find here stateside. That being said, the convenience of single serving packaging and the ability to learn your preferences with minimal outlay are the largest factors in choosing this tea – not having tried EoT or Tea Urchin offerings, they appear to have similar teas with some bulk discounts (excepting the quite affordable TLH, which compares favorably at this outlet to top end competitors).
I have tried Tealet’s DHP (as offered by BTTC), and this was frankly superior. Whether it was enough so to justify the significantly higher cost is a decision I leave as an exercise for the reader.
May your cups be full of delicious tea.
