Travel with us on our search for great tea. Our Tea Guide is an elegant presentation of the amazing Camellia sinensis plant. Six styles of tea are displayed in small glass-covered canisters made of aluminum. Rare white, green, oolong, black, and pu-erh teas are included in this fun gift, accompanied by an educational booklet about the teas and how to enjoy them. The box is custom-made in Thailand of highest-quality mulberry tree products.

 

This is the best way we have found for making tea in a mug or large pot - plenty of room for the leaves to expand and release their flavor. The Permanent Tea Filter is an inexpensive but very high quality tea filter. Use it with a mug or small teapot. Perfect for enjoying several steeps of the same leaves. It comes with a brewing lid which then serves as a base for the filter when removed from a mug or pot.

 

A type of green tea, Japanese bancha uses broad, large leaves that are harvested late in the picking season. We found this bancha incense made in Ujitawara near Uji, which is south of Kyoto. It is 99.9 percent made from Kyoto bancha (known as Kyobancha), with the remaining 0.1 percent aromatic wood. The Japanese incense maker spent a year creating the correct formula and named it after his 4-year-old granddaughter; the kanji characters translate to 'beautiful-moon-scent.' No chemicals were included to make the incense, which imparts a wonderful smoky smell suitable for freshening up a room quickly with the scent of bancha tea. Some tea ceremony rooms in Japan have been using the incense for its relaxing, therapeutic effects. Each box contains 16 cones, each of which burns for about twenty minutes. We think you'll find that the scent goes nicely with your cup of Japanese tea.