Hooray for The Kiva!

Over Christmas break, Brian & I travelled back to Oregon for a little family time. While we were there, I spent one afternoon wandering around town with an old friend. She wanted to go into a little grocery store downtown, so I followed her. A few steps inside the door, I ran into their bulk herbs, which was perfect, because I had wanted to pick up a few spices while we were in town. (You'd think that a large city like Boston would have one store where one could get a decent selection of herbs and spices in bulk, but I haven't found it yet.) After packaging up a few tablespoons of turmeric, dried thyme, and dried parsley, I scanned the labels to see if there was anything else I wanted. And lo! My eyes travelled to the display beside the herbs and spices. There was a whole rack of bulk tea!

Now, you know I like buying loose tea because it's more compact and less expensive than bagged tea. But even still, usually when you buy bulk tea, you have to buy one or two ounces. Here, you could measure it out in tablespoons! I began pulling jars off the shelf and smelling them. Some were classic blends by unrecognized companies. However, they also had a good collection of Republic of Tea blends. This was quite exciting, as I've wanted to try Republic of Tea teas, but could never shell out $7 for a tin.

So, I stocked up. (Some might say I went overboard, but I think stocking up is a better description. I was limiting myself from taking a sample of each!)

In all, I decided on eight teas based on their smell or their interestingness:

Jasmine
Oolong
Lapsang Souchong (I know this is a classic, but I haven't tried it yet.)
Twig (this one scored high on interestingness)
Black Currant
Cinnamon Plum
Wild Blueberry
Gogi Raspberry Green


The last three are teas by Republic of Tea. I've tried the Cinnamon Plum and the Gogi Raspberry so far. (The Cinnamon Plum was great, but I didn't care so much for the Gogi Raspberry - it reminded me of raspberry Emergen-C.)

And take a guess at how much all these samples cost me.

$4.78! All right - I guess that's kind of a lot if you look at how much tea I got. At $25-$30 per pound, it's probably not the way to go if I want just one kind. But getting to try two or three cups of each kind for 60c each is awesome!

My old favorite place to buy tea in town has now gone out of business, but it appears that I now have a new reason to go back to town. Other than the relatives, of course!