I don't drink coffee, but I love tea, especially some of the flavored teas available, and although it seems that all the places I used to go to buy my tea from have gone out of business, I've come up with a couple of places I really like. I prefer places where I can walk in and buy, so I don't have to pay shipping and handling charges, although I have bought tea over the Internet with some success. And there have been two favorite places where I have bought tea, both in the Bethesda, Md. area: Zen Tara Tea Shop and Teavana. (The second of these is a chain, but has pretty nice stuff.) Yesterday I read of another place in a newspaper: the Georgetown Spice and Tea Exchange. I figured I had to go there, and this morning I did so. And I was favorably impressed.
They have tea, spices, flavored sugars and salts, powdered cheeses, and similar things in large glass canisters so you can open them up and sniff, which is really the best way to tell whether you'll like a tea. (I rather imagine the flavored salts don't have much of an aroma, but for tea it is the ideal way to make a decision, and since I don't do much cooking, it's for tea that I'll be coming to this place.)
They do not have as big a variety of teas as Teavana or Zen Tara, but they do have about 30 different kinds, most of which seem interesting (I bought three today). Because it is not just tea, but spices and the flavored salts and sugars that they carry, they could not have the 100+ varieties that Zen Tara has, but they have some types you can't get elsewhere. And so I'm sure I'll be back, though Georgetown is a bit out of the way for me. Like Zen Tara, it seems to be run by a nice person, and has a good variety of teas to choose from, so I want to see them succeed in their business.
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