You can only order from three companies for the rest of your life.

Mariage Freres (easy because they got the widest range of all kinds of tea ever)

The-o-dor

third to be determined…

Mariage Freres
Taiwan Tea Crafts
Tea from Taiwan

Mariage Freres has absolutely the best selection of Darjeeling teas. The Da Yu ling I’ve had from Taiwan Tea Crafts was excellent. Yet they often sell out of their best teas so Tea from Taiwan is the back up for Taiwanese High Mountain Oolong teas.

Red Leaf – need a good supply of matcha!
Butiki – Stacy’s teas have all impressed me so far
Adagio – need my fandom blends!

If I had a choice between 10, I’m pretty sure I’d have the other seven slots allocated too. There are just so many amazing companies!

Where do you guys find your Mariage Freres?

I looked through several of the links, the prices seem to vary widely.

TOUGH!
Hmmm, for sure

Mandala Teas (for delicious pu’er/oolong/everything)
Butiki Teas (good balance of amazing blends and straight teas)

Third slot? UGGGGGG, so many I’d want to list. I’d probably go with Lupicia for their creative blends and big lineup, but I could easily lean to Yunnan Sourcing (for more pu’er!) or 52 Teas (for really fun blends).

My choices would be Teavivre; Verdant, and Golden Moon Teas

This is really tough.

In the end I factored in several things I felt were really important: Have I placed multiple orders from them, do they continuously come up with new blends for me to try (I don’t want to get bored of drinking tea), can I also acquire tea ware from them, how accessible are they, how many of their already existing blends do I adore…

In the end, Butiki and DAVIDsTEA were clear cut companies that made it into my top three.

That coveted third spot? Well, that was a bit less clear. I’m thinking it’d go to either Red Leaf Tea (for the matcha, which I drink in a way unlike any other tea, and which has many varieties), 52Teas (because of all the new flavours) or Tea Desire (though they don’t release many new flavours, many of their existing ones are cupboard staples – and they’re also local; plus they have great teaware selection).

1 Yunomius – I love Japanese teas, new favourites that I can’t live without

2 Teavivre – They sell my favourite Pu Erh and some beautiful Chinese teas, some second favourites

3 Butiki – I get some of my favourite blends there and they do a good selection of unflavoured teas.

Oh Marzipan, another hard question.

My three would be:
1. Nina’s Paris (because I need my Japon :P)
2. Lupicia (because I just started trying their teas and everything has been amazing)
3. DAVIDs (because they were my introduction to loose leaf and even though I know there are better companies out there, I am always excited for when they release new teas)

Red Leaf Tea (gotta have matcha!), Butiki, Harney&Sons, and Della Terra (need my chiffons) were all up there though.