Ivo and I had an afternoon tea at the nearby Cafe this week. Their homemade desserts were really tasty, unfortunately the overall score was dragging down by the loose leaf white tea they served.

I truly believe it is their intention to offer good quality food / drink and fine experience to their customers, and somehow they have mislead by their tea vendor about the quality.

I hope the sample and note that I offered to them today help them to know how to distinguish quality in tea.


My husband and I really love your homemade desserts that you serve in the Café. From your menu, I understand you want to offer quality and fine experience to your customers that you offer loose leaf tea.  Unfortunately, my evaluation from the white tea that you offer was very disappointed.

Here I offer you a small bag of authentic pure quality white tea from FuDing, Fujian, China.  Hopefully, it helps you to distinguish the differences between pure authentic quality vs. aromatic incorrect quality from the taste of flavors and taste.

On your menu you mentioned White tea from China, authentic picked by monkey, with fine green tea flavors , I hope the pure natural flavors and tastes from the Shou Mei that I gave you today and the following basic information here help you to make better judgement in the tea selection in the future:

  • Monkeys don’t pick tea
    • Indeed, there are different types of monkey in China and monkeys are very active and smart; but monkey can’t manage the tea picking operation and are not being trained to pick tea, not even those smart monkeys in China.
  • The basic notion of flavors and taste from white tea are very differ from green tea
  • Good quality teas, the color should be clear, clean and transparent
  • The last thing that it is hard to expect unpleasant astringency and bitterness from white tea

Based on the unpleasant astringency and bitterness, I even question if that tea was truly from China.

When we think or speak about quality, I am sure you are endorsing the fundamental moral principles of honesty and business ethics as I. For pure quality tea, the quality does not limited to vivid aroma or the color of dried leaves, but more on brilliant color, natural gentle flavors and delicious sweet & fine taste.

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