Green Black or White for new palate?

‘All of the above’ applies to this question.
:)

Where are you planning to get your loose leaf? You can build your palate, but if you are building it on bad tea you are not setting a good base. Likely you are adding so much sugar as the tea isn’t prepared right (water temperature/ratio) or poor quality tea.

I would get everything, a white, green, oolong (green and roasted), black. Expand out from there by region. Keep in mind green tea shouldn’t be made with boiling water. Many like tasting from light to dark.

I think if you wanted to try a single tea that has a huge range of tastes, I would go with oolong over the others (not counting puer, thats another beast)

If you want a good website to buy from that sells good tea but won’t burn a hole in your wallet, try Simpson and Vail at www.svtea.com.

If I had to suggest just one type maybe lightly oxidized oolongs. They’re nice across different quality levels, with a taste profile that’s easy to appreciate, and easy to brew, hard to screw up. Drinking across different styles makes more sense though; why not. The issue might lead back to how to find the right value related to drinking decent teas based on your own expectations. It’s hard to say just a little about that. Just keep the big picture in mind, explore in ways that make sense, and don’t worry too much about what you aren’t drinking and it will work itself out. If you can walk into a tea shop and taste there that really short-cuts the process since you’ll only buy what you like. It’s not the end of the world owning a tea you don’t like but it’s not an experience you would want to keep repeating, and buying random teas would lead there sometimes.

There is no best kind of tea, since each person is unique and has a particular taste. To start out, find a place that sells small amounts of teas, and buy a bunch of samples. Taste them all and see what you like. For Chinese tea, Teavivre has a wide variety of high quality teas. Free shipping starts at $30, and for that you could get close to a dozen samples, each one good for several pots. Use steepster reviews or the website descriptions to select teas you think you will like. At a lower price point, Adagio is a good place to start.

Once you start to explore, you will discover a great deal of variety within each type. Thus a Darjeeling black is very different from a Ceylon black. That’s part of the fun!

Thanks for the ideas. I’ve ordered samples from two tea houses (no local shops in this region) and look forward to beginning my explorations soon!

It kind of goes without saying given where this is posted but reading what others think of teas can be interesting, especially in the beginning. You would want to avoid getting caught up in thinking you really should taste a tea a certain way, and just experience it for yourself, but it can’t hurt to read some background or even detailed reviews of the same tea. For most casual tea drinkers palate training would probably be a non-issue, and probably should be, since it can interfere with enjoying teas for some, but it could be of interest to see what others think. Different people appreciate teas differently, not just related to preference but also related to how they take the experience, in terms of both immediate experience and trying to explore it all or taking more organic and limited approach.

It’s funny how one learns to “pick up” different flavors and aspects over time, how an aspect can be right there but you don’t notice it at all until something clicks. Starting out the focus is likely more on sorting what basic preferences are instead, and sourcing issues related to finding decent versions of teas.

You should try black Tea, such as Ceylon tea, the good Ceylon tea that smell likes bouquet. Also, you can put the milk or lemon slice together, that tastes so great!