Where to Buy Green Tea Leaves Online

Most people don’t have a good tea store in their neighborhood. Most neighborhoods don’t have a tea shop at all, but even if they do, the tea leaves they sell are often low quality and overpriced. Luckily, there are many online tea stores—too many, in fact. It can be hard to find a trustworthy one. If you’re looking to buy some loose leaf green tea, but don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place.
Eisai’s Choice Sencha from Art of Tea
I’ll begin with, my favorite online tea purchase. If you love the taste of green tea, you’ll want a sencha. This Japanese green tea has the quintessential green tea flavor: grassy, crisp and clear. The best value I’ve found is Eisai’s Choice Sencha from Art of Tea. The leaves are high quality, but the price is very reasonable, with a sample tin costing $5 and an 8 oz. pouch (makes about 120 cups) going for $40.
If you prefer the slightly milder Chinese green teas, I’d definitely go with a Dragon Well tea. It is the classic Chinese tea with a gentle, mellow flavor. Once again, Art of Tea has the best value with their organic Dragon Well. At the time of writing, this tea was sold out, so I was not able to check on the current prices. You can expect to pay a bit less that you would for the Sencha.
This is actually the main problem with any good Dragon Well tea. The Longjing (Dragon Well in Chinese) region in the West Lake area of Hangzhou is very small, meaning that the year’s harvest sells out quickly and once any store has sold all its stock, they won’t be able to replenish it until the next year. You can still find a lot of cheaper Dragon Well, but it will come from other regions and thus not be a true Dragon Well, even if it carries the name.
Generation Tea has a good alternative if Art of Tea’s is sold out. Actually, make that a great alternative, as their Early Harvest West Lake Royal Longjing is the best Dragon Well you’ll find outside of China. Naturally, it is also much more expensive (ranging from $28 for 2 oz to $200 for 1 lb). Because it is so expensive, it doesn’t generally sell out nearly as quickly. The main problem with this tea is that you have to put up with Generation’s hideous website. It looks like a leftover relic from the early days of the internet.
The Uji Gyokuro from Art of Tea
Gyokuro is the best green tea money can buy (apart from Matcha, but that is a matter for a different article—specifically, this one). This shade-grown Japanese tea will not come cheap, generally costing twice as much as a Sencha or a Dragon Well. The Uji Gyokuro from Art of Tea is the best value. It ranges from $24 for 2 oz (~30 cups) to $160 for 1 lb (~240 cups).
Virtually everyone has an account on Amazon, making it a convenient place to buy tea. The main problem is the extremely large selection, most of which is not very good. It can be hard to find the quality offerings among all the junk, but they are there.
For sencha, the best option is the excellent organic Sencha from Rishi tea. It is reasonably priced at under $12 for 2.1 oz. For Dragon Well, try the 4 oz box from Serendipi Tea which also goes for around $11. Aiya sells a good organic Gyokuro on Amazon. 80 grams cost $35.
Silver Leaf Tea has the lowest prices on loose leaf green tea, but the quality is low and their website looks terrible. Their tea works well if you make large amounts to carry around all day in a thermos or something, but I would not recommend it for brewing on a cup by cup basis. Their Sencha is only $29 for a pound.
Alternatively, you could try some of the cheaper options on Amazon. I haven’t tried any myself, so I can’t give you any advice. Chances are you’ll end up with a horrible tea, but you won’t spend much to get it, so it might be worth trying a few until you hit the jackpot.
If you’ve been asking yourself, “Where can I buy green tea,” I hope I was able to offer some good suggestions to get you started. If you have any questions or if you’ve found a great tea you think I would enjoy, please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me through my contact page.

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Where to Buy Loose Leaf Tea Online

If you want to drink higher quality tea, you should be buying loose leaf tea. While some gourmet tea bags do contain quality tea leaves, even those are not as good as the best loose leaves. And most tea bags are filled with whatever is left over after the best leaves have been sorted out for loose teas.
Loose leaf green tea from Yunnan province in China
In the past, quality tea leaves were not easy to come by in the west, but thanks to the online shopping explosion, you can now get great tea anywhere. The biggest problem shoppers face these days is too much choice. It can be difficult to find the trustworthy online tea vendors among the hundreds of bad ones. Below are my favorite online tea shops, followed by some general advice for buying tea from a new vendor.
My favorite online tea shop is Art of Tea. I wouldn’t say they are the absolute best at anything, but they do everything well. There are shops with flashier websites, but Art of Tea’s looks almost as good and it is easy to navigate. There are shops with better quality teas, but they charge much higher prices. Similarly, shops with much lower prices sell lower quality teas. In short, Art of Tea offers the best value for your money.
More importantly, they allow customer reviews on their websites (any good shop should do this; see my advice below). Star ratings for the individual teas are nice, but for me, the comments left by other customers say much more about a given tea. Tastes differ, so even if others enjoyed a tea and rated it highly, that doesn’t necessarily mean I will enjoy it, too. The comments will tell you why they enjoyed it.
But the real clincher is the samples. Art of Tea sell sample sizes for all of their teas, meaning you can try anything on their site for just a few dollars. I spend a lot of time in Asia and one of my favorite things about buying tea there is getting to try the different varieties in a tea shop before making a purchase. Online shops that offer samples are the next best thing. Click here to go to Art of Tea’s website.
If you are looking specifically for Chinese teas, Teavivre is a great store. Their website is not quite as nice but their teas are excellent and while their prices are definitely higher than many stores, you get what you pay for. They also have customer reviews and offer sample sizes for all of their teas. They even give away several free samples with every order. I love this tea shop, but as mentioned, they only carry Chinese teas.
A good alternative to Art of Tea that offers teas from all over, not just China, is Mighty Leaf Tea. They are very similar to Art of Tea, but lag just slightly behind in everything, especially when it comes to the look of their website. In the past they did not ship outside the US, but they have since changed that. Since this is a new feature, I have not tried it, but I have not heard of any complaints concerning their shipping. Nevertheless, if you are not located in the US, you might want to use a different vendor.
Finally, I’ll mention Teavana. They are the biggest and best known online tea seller. They also have brick and mortar stores located in shopping malls in America. They are a good store overall, but I have always felt their teas cost more than they should. That’s a personal opinion though and I have nothing bad to say about them otherwise, although I do not have much experience ordering from them.
Generation Tea sells some of the highest quality Chinese teas available outside of China. They also have a website that looks like a leftover relic from the early days of the internet. If you can deal with that and want to try some really high quality tea, this is the shop for you.
Silver Leaf Teas has the worst website I’ve used. So why use them at all? To be honest, I don’t generally, since I spend a lot of time in Asia and have ready access to very cheap teas. But if you’re looking for a low cost tea to brew in large quantities as ice tea or to fill a thermos, this is the place to get it.
Also, if you put milk and sugar in your tea, you could save a lot of money by ordering from Silver Leaf, since having high quality leaves really only matters if you drink your tea straight. If you’ve ever been to India, for example, you probably enjoyed the local chai, but I can assure you, the tea you were drinking was incredibly cheap and far lower quality than anything Silver Leaf sells. When you add milk, sugar, etc. to your tea, the quality becomes mostly irrelevant and you might as well save money.
For most people, Amazon.com is the most convenient place to buy tea. They have a very large selection, too. Unfortunately, the large selection can actually be a problem. Much of it is low quality, so it can be difficult to sift through all that to find the best values.
On my pages for the individual teas, I give recommendations for good buys on Amazon. You can also use the rating system on their website. Most of their teas don’t cost much, so you can easily try a few until you find one you love.
Amazon doesn’t have too many high quality teas, though. If that’s what you’re looking for, you are usually better off with a dedicated tea vendor. There are some exceptions, though. Again, the individual tea pages on this site point some of those out.
If you’re after lower quality tea, Amazon is a treasure trove. Silver Leaf probably offers better value overall, but Amazon has a much nicer and more user-friendly website.
I travel in Asia a lot, so I generally get my tea from local tea shops in Japan and China these days. When I am in Europe or the US, though, I end up using online tea shops.
In the US, I tend to shop mostly from Art of Tea. In Europe, I end up using Teavivre for Chinese teas or Amazon.com for others, since Art of Tea only ship to the US and Canada.
You really can’t go wrong with any of the tea stores listed on this page (except for Silver leaf, if you are looking for high quality tea), so what are you waiting for? Place a sample order and see what a difference high quality tea leaves can make.

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Where to Buy White Tea Online

In the past, good quality loose leaf white tea was difficult to find. Luckily, we now have the internet and its hundreds of tea shops. Most of them have white tea for sale. Unfortunately, much of it is low quality. Below, I give you recommendations for the best values I’ve found, along with the highest quality white teas and the cheapest.
I will also provide some good options on Amazon, since it is, for many, the most convenient place to buy tea. Finally, I have some general purchasing advice for those who don’t need my recommendations and who already have a place in mind from which to get their tea.
Organic White Hair Silver Needle tea leaves from Art of Tea
Before all that, let’s look at the different kinds of white tea. There are three, in order from the highest quality to the lowest: White Hair Silver Needle (Baihao Yinzhen in Chinese), White Peony (Bai Mudan) and Shou Mei. Forget the last one. If you’re going to spend the money to get white tea, why would you settle for the lowest quality one?
Silver Needle White tea is considered the best and it is the most expensive. Despite that, some people actually prefer White Peony. Silver Needle tea is very mild and delicate, while White Peony has a more robust and fruity flavor. It might be worth giving both a try. If you find you prefer White Peony, you can save a lot of money in the future.
The best value White Hair Silver Needle tea is the 2014 Yunnan Baihao Yinzhen from Generation Tea. It’s cheaper than you’ll find at many other stores (the price ranges from $12 for 2 oz to $80 for a pound), because it comes from Yunnan province and not Fujian. I still like it though, which is why I consider it a great value. The main problem with this tea is that you’ll have to deal with Generation Tea’s hideous website.
The best White Peony tea is Art of Tea’s Organic White Peony. It’s a high quality tea that only costs $13 for a 4 oz pouch (makes around 60 cups) and $40 for a pound (~240 cups).
The highest quality Silver Needle tea comes from Art of Tea (pictured at the top of this article). It is rare and often out of stock. This was the case at the time of writing, so I am not able to give you a current price. It is by far the most expensive tea listed on this page, though.
Organic White Peony leaves from Teavivre
For White Peony, Teavivre has the highest quality offering. Prices for their Organic Bai Mudan (pictured above) range from $10.90 for a 50g (1.75 oz) bag to $79.90 for a 500g (17.5 oz) bag. If you prefer tins to bags, you’ll have to pay a bit more.
Amazon is the most convenient place to buy tea online, since almost everyone already has an account. The problem is the quality. While there are some excellent teas on Amazon, they are few and far between and it’s not always easy to find them.
When it comes to white tea, their selection leaves a lot to be desired. None of their choices are exceptional, but a few are pretty good and don’t cost all that much, so there’s no harm in trying them at least once. For White Needle Tea, I’d go with this Organic White Tea from Tealux. It costs around $24 for 4 oz and the quality is pretty good.
Amazon’s selection of White Peony is more limited. The best bet is this one from Coffee Bean Direct. It costs $32, but that gets you a full 2 pounds of tea. There’s a reason it’s so cheap though. The quality is good, but far from great. Basically, it’s a good value purchase if you’re not looking for the highest quality.
If you weren’t asking “Where can I buy white tea?” and were not in need of my buying recommendations, I can still offer you some general advice for purchasing tea from online stores:
If you’re buying from an unknown website, do a bit of research first. See if they have a physical address and if they’re open about who is running the site. Read their shipping and return policies. See what the website looks like. It’s better if it looks good and if it has customer reviews you can read. That said, I know some good tea sites with ugly webpages and no review system.
In general, if you know nothing about a site and it looks poorly made and doesn’t have any feedback, I’d stay away or just place a small order to start with. Sample packs are always a great idea if you’re unsure about a tea vendor.
Always check the origin of the tea. The best white tea comes from Fujian Province in China. If it comes from anywhere else, it will probably be a lower quality and should cost less. That does not mean you shouldn’t get tea from other areas, though. Sometimes it’s even preferable.
The Silver Needle tea I recommended above from Yunnan Province is a good example. You get a good tea and pay less, because it does not come from Fujian. In general, just be aware what you’re buying and that it should be cheaper if it comes from outside Fujian.
I’ve seen a lot of white tea in tea bags and also a lot with flavoring. In general, the tea leaves in tea bags are lower quality and when you’re buying a high quality tea (which any white tea is), it doesn’t make much sense to sacrifice quality.
Similarly, flavored teas usually use lower quality tea leaves. In most cases, the added flavors are used to cover this up. There are exceptions, of course, but not many. I recommend sticking to loose leaf teas with no additives, not even natural ones (Jasmine is an exception).
If you made it this far, you hopefully found at least on useful piece of information in this post. If you had a question I failed to answer, feel free to leave a comment below or to get in touch with me through my contact page. If you know of a better place to buy white tea than the ones I mentioned, please let me know that as well.

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