TeaForum.org

I was thinking it would be nice to have something like this https://www.home-barista.com/home-roast ... 56178.html
except on the tea forum. With maybe a heading such as:

White Teas:
www.blahblah
www.

Black Teas:
www.

Oolong:
www.

I think it would help newbies out like myself to have all of the vendors in one section so they can just click and buy rather than perusing each individual type of tea for vendors. Let me know if this exists or if this is pointless.

Thanks,

Braden

The closest thing I can think of is the reddit User Choice Vendor List on r/tea, although I have a feeling that the group here on TeaForum would rank vendors a little bit differently since usually (in my experience) there is more of an appreciation for higher quality tea here.

It's not even ranking vendors though. Just having all vendors on one page. So it is easier to access. I don't mind scrolling through the forum under Black Tea, White, etc. but it would just be more user friendly to have it all on one page.

Thanks,

Braden

I would LOVE a list. It would be nice to have it all on one spot. It’s not even ranking them. People on this forum are WAY more discerning about the quality of their tea than those on Reddit, honestly if someone on this forum feels good about recommending a place, then it’s already the cream of the crop.

There's this (the list is catered to beginners):
https://www.reddit.com/r/tea/wiki/vendors/page_01


But quite frankly I don't trust it at all and can't see how some of those vendors ended up in the top 10 unless they paid $. Our respective threads are much more trustworthy since they're an aggregation of different users' experiences.

If everybody just starts throwing together vendors they like in this thread, I'm sure the mods would be happy to aggregate them and toss them somewhere. (I hope I'm not speaking out of line here).

bradenl123 wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 25, 2019 1:44 pm

so they can just click and buy rather than perusing each individual type of tea for vendors

Braden

Yeah, people like to click and buy. I have very few customers and one reason is that I don't operate from a website. People need to contact me with PMs here or through my normal e-mail and think a few seconds to make a major decision, pay with Paypal or send me a check and type a few lines to me.

To go by listed "individual types of tea" as you describe it, to purchase dayuling, for example, by vendor lists, you can end up buying counterfeit dayuling, real dayuling of varying quality (due to a lot of reasons) etc. Instead of reading posts, you can read websites and make several purchases before you are happy with one of them.

By reading posts, you can see that respected members that seem sound in judgments, like this one from one vendor and another from another vendor. I believe you are more likely to find what you are looking for, faster.

Perhaps we can find a middle ground and update the first page of each vendor recommendation thread with the vendors that have been mentioned in the discussion.
This way it's easier to find vendors but, at the same time, it's safer for newcomers than just a random list.
It'll also be easier to differentiate as much as we want within a variety (just think about the wulong galaxy) without fear of taking up too much space.

Maybe we could explore the use of tagging when talking about vendors to make it easier to use the search function? Like tag the end of a post or something, if you’re talking about a tea or vendor you want posterity to be able to search for? This year I’ve tried exploring green tea, and it was very hard to go through all the old posts because the search system wouldn’t recognize certain words because they were “too common”. I couldn’t search for the word green, which sure by itself is common but if combined with vendor would have been very useful. Kind of hard to search for green tea when you can’t use the word green. I ended up using old posts (like 10 years!) from TC because the search engine there wasn’t as picky.

The point of the list though is to have input from those who are on here which assumes they are reputable vendors. I am not asking for an exhaustive list of every single tea vendor. I am asking for a list of vendors all in one location that people get their tea. For example, (perhaps I should have made a list from what people have told me).

https://www.thesteepingroom.com
https://tillermantea.net
https://white2tea.com
https://thejadeleaf.com
http://www.thes-du-japon.com/index.php? ... &chapter=0
https://leafygreentea.com
https://www.o-cha.com


But with the teas that are commonly bought

So:

Green Tea:
https://www.o-cha.com
https://leafygreentea.com

Oloong:
https://tillermantea.net

Does this make more sense? All the information is already on this forum but rather than going to each tea it is all on a "Vendor's List" and each year the list is updated by those on the forum if new teas are available and high quality from that vendor or a new vendor comes into play.


Thanks,

Braden

On the french tea forum there is a compilation with links[1] to every post that is (or can be read as) a tasting note with all those links ordered per specific tea (tea name, vendor, year). This way anyone interested can quickly find other users' opinion on tea/vendor. Of course compiling such lists is a HUGE amount of work but I for one really appreciate the system.

[1] http://forumdesamateursdethe.fr/viewtop ... =14&t=1756 The links for tea type lead to the list of tasting notes for that particular type.

Here's an idea. Maybe having a dedicated recommendation thread would be good. Right now I have to troll through all the threads, and the "what tea are you drinking" threads. Maybe if we had a dedicated thread it would do a lot for putting everything in one place. People who are looking for new vendors could post what they are looking for in one spot, or just people who have a really good shop they always buy from. That way to find what we're looking for we'd only have to search through one thread instead of the whole forum. And it would make it easier to use the search function because it wouldn't be searching the whole site.

There is not a lot of activity on the forum. If people don't want to read the limited amount of posts in their areas of interest, they are just looking for quick advice on shopping which they will do a couple of times a year. I treasure the talk. I do talk about myself and my teas more than some may find interesting, but it is easy to move on to another post. Cheers

Ethan Kurland wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 30, 2019 8:36 pm

There is not a lot of activity on the forum. If people don't want to read the limited amount of posts in their areas of interest, they are just looking for quick advice on shopping which they will do a couple of times a year. I treasure the talk. I do talk about myself and my teas more than some may find interesting, but it is easy to move on to another post. Cheers

That's a really good point. I hadn't thought about that.

Ethan Kurland wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 30, 2019 8:36 pm

There is not a lot of activity on the forum. If people don't want to read the limited amount of posts in their areas of interest, they are just looking for quick advice on shopping which they will do a couple of times a year. I treasure the talk. I do talk about myself and my teas more than some may find interesting, but it is easy to move on to another post. Cheers

I don't know if I agree with this necessarily. While the number of posts are relatively small and easy to keep track of if you visit the site on a daily or even weekly basis, it can be quite daunting for a brand new member.

There are currently over 1200 posts in the 'Oolong Tea' section and over 450 in the 'Vendor Discussion & Recommendation'. Information can get buried very fast. For example, a new reader might not notice Vicotria's post in January 2018:

have tasted a new roasted Oolong, 'Tian Xian Hong Oolong', (roasted by Mr Li, in Guo Ying Village, Nantou) that is delicious. Hand picked and heavily oxidized, it is amazingly rich from DieKunstDesTees out of Eschborn, Germany;

Or her post about Teaful in July:

Savoring TeaFul's buttery smooth and sweet LiShan. Jason really knows how to pick excellent oolong from Taiwan, their specialty. His Muzha and #18 and #21 are really rich as well.