101 Tea Plantation

My favorite tea shop! I buy there my favorite tea, jasmine oolong. It has real jasmine flowers and very good taste. It is from Taiwan. This king of tea sells for much more money elsewhere. They sell tons of other kinds of tea too and provide tea tasting.

Very sweet ladies who work there. Will brew you samples prior to purchasing. Great loose leaf tea that even my picky husband and Taiwanese mother approve. Sell all sorts of tea related products, but can’t comment on those since we only buy loose leaf tea here.

I had spare time and walked around after my late lunch near by. When I got in, the woman greeted me in Chinese and I said I don’t speak Chinese and I just want to look around. Then she asked me again if I wanted to buy and I repeated myself that I just wanted to look around. Then I got really curious cause I don’t mind spending the money if the tea is good. So I asked her if she can brew for me and I can sit down and try. The strangest answer from is tea only. So I am a little confused. I said yes I want to try tea and to. It the story short… she has clue what I am trying to say so I just left the store.
I feel bad she doesn’t understand English well enough but what can I say, when the first question you ask a customer is you want to buy, isn’t very great customer service.

After eating lunch in the area, one of our friends wanted to buy some tea so we stopped by this store just to check it out. Upon entering two ladies greeted us and asked if we needed any help. They spoke in Mandarin with us, and their English isn’t bad, but it isn’t that great. Sometimes they’d get a little confused if we asked them questions in English, although they did their best to answer. The friends we were with weren’t Chinese so we ended up doing a bit of translating for them. The ladies were really friendly and told us about a promotional deal they were having for lunar new year: 1 lb of green or oolong tea regularly priced at $ 30 for $ 15. Since we didn’t want to blindly buy that much tea without trying it first, we asked if we could possibly sample both types. There’s a tea tasting table set-​up in the back of the store where they will let you have a tea tasting. It’s not just a sample, it’s like a real tea tasting! They go through the whole procedure of pouring the first batch into tiny cups for you to smell and you don’t get to actually taste the tea until the third time the tea pot is refilled when the flavor of the leaves really comes out after the leaves open. You get to taste the next three cups as well and with each soak, the flavor of the tea becomes stronger and better tasting! We tasted two types of tea– a green tea and an oolong tea. They started us off with the green because you’re supposed to test from light to dark. A lot of teas I’ve had in the past have a weird bitter after taste that gets stuck in your throat after drinking tea, but these teas actually left a pleasant light taste after drinking them. The ladies answered all our questions about the differences in the tea, caffeine levels, and even the benefits of the tea. We left a lot more knowledgable then when we went in.
I don’t think on a normal basis anyone would have time to make tea this way, but it was so nice that the two ladies in the store let us experience the tea tasting. It really makes a difference when made correctly! Both of the teas were really tasty and we did not leave empty handed!