The Fragrant Leaf

As a recent transplant from San Francisco, I’ve been struggling to replace my favorite culinary items and restaurants with comparable local alternatives. The Fragrant Leaf stands out as my favorite place to buy tea anywhere, including San Francisco (move over Red Blossom Tea Company). I love Taiwanese oolongs, and I’m currently enjoying my *sixth* brewing from the same leaves (Dong Ding) this morning, a testament to the tea’s extraordinary quality and freshness.
I found New Mexico Tea Company disappointing by comparison. I can barely get two acceptable brewings from their Tie Guan Yin. By contrast, Fragrant Leaf’s lishan high mountain oolong is sublime. There is no comparison. The owners at Fragrant Leaf actually know the tea farmers in Taiwan personally, and I’m sure that makes a huge difference in terms of the quality they can procure from overseas.
If you drink flavored teas like most of what you see from New Mexico Tea Company, you owe it to yourself to try teas that are so rich and complex they don’t need any kind of flavoring. That’s what you’ll find at the Fragrant Leaf. Adding flavoring to their teas would be like a tequila lover adding margarita mix to Patron Silver. Yet their pricing is reasonable, comparable to New Mexico Tea Company for considerably better quality.

New year, New tea. Looked all over Albuquerque for a retailer that sold matcha green tea. The Fragrant Leaf brought me much than that. I was able to buy the matcha, the whisk, bamboo spoon and tradition matcha cup all at this one location. I was very impressed with everything about this place. The store is clean and very relaxing. If you want to escape for a cup of tea, I highly recommend this store. I look forward to having a warm cup of tea in the near future again. Thanks

If you dislike tea you and I will probably have a problem. I love tea, I love loose leaf tea, I love bags of tea, I love anything with the word «tea» in it.
Nob Hill has been missing a place to buy quality loose leaf tea. I was more than excited when this placed opened because it gives everyone a reason to try different types of tea from various regions!
So, if you love Lipton, that canned stuff, that good stuff stop in and get your variety on!

This shop has a really outstanding selection of teas of all varieties, as well as an assortment of beautiful Chinese and Japanese tea sets. Robin and Lee know a lot about their teas and are happy to offer advice on brewing, as well as describing the different teas to help with your selection. They buy a lot of teas from small farmers in China and India, so a lot of attention is paid to detail in the harvesting and processing.
The tea-​tasting events are very nice. I learned a lot about how tea is grown and processed, as well as getting to sample four delicious teas in a very soothing and relaxing atmosphere. I would definitely recommend going to one of these.
If you like tea, or just want to learn more about it, this is the place to go!