Specialty shops
Red tea is the category where a shop adds the least value and is still worth using, mostly for the everyday tea.
Blends are consistent by design, so tasting one in a shop tells you exactly what the next bag will taste like.
A shop will usually let you taste a blend and a single origin side by side, and that comparison settles most questions.
For single origins the shop’s knowledge is the point: an estate, a flush, a year. Those are worth asking about.
The price premium over online is modest for blends and large for single origins, which is worth knowing.
Check whether they weigh it in front of you. Pre-packed bags of house blend are often older than the loose stock.
A good shop sells you 100 grams of a single origin rather than insisting on 250, which is what you actually want.
Use the shop to find the blend you will drink every day, then decide where to buy it in quantity.
What a shop really gives you here is consistency of supply, and for a daily tea that beats a cheaper one-off.
Online
Red tea is the safest category to buy online, because it is the most consistent and the least age-sensitive.
The risk is not that the tea is bad, it is that the tea is ordinary and priced as though it were not.
Look for a harvest date on single origins. Two years is where the top note starts to go.
Blends are the safest online purchase of all, because the same blend tastes the same whoever ships it.
Postage makes small orders poor value. A single 250 gram bag is where online starts to win.
Bulk is tempting and usually a mistake. Buy six months of tea rather than two years of it.
Read the description for the estate and the flush. If neither is named, you are buying a commodity at a premium.
Specialist importers beat general marketplaces, and the price difference is often smaller than expected.
Use online for the everyday tea, and keep single origins for somewhere you can ask questions.
At 4 grams a cup, a 250 gram bag is about 60 cups, or two months of daily drinking for one person.
Markets and direct
Markets are the weakest channel for red tea, mostly because the premium product here is information rather than leaf.
An estate name and a flush are what make a Darjeeling worth the money, and neither can be verified at a stall.
Loose red tea sold by weight with no label is a commodity, and it is often priced as though it were not.
You can taste before buying, which is the one advantage, and for a blend that is enough to make the trip worthwhile.
Watch for old stock sold as fresh, which is harder to spot in red tea than in green because it looks the same.
Buying direct from an estate is possible through some importers and group buys, and it is the best route to a specific tea.
It works when the importer names the estate and the invoice shows it, and it does not work otherwise.
For Chinese red tea, markets can be good value if you know which cultivar you want and can check the tips.
The practical rule is simple: markets for blends, specialists for single origins, and never the other way round.
The practical mix
Buy your everyday blend from whichever channel is cheapest per gram, and that will usually be online.
Buy your single origins from someone who can name the estate, the cultivar and the year.
Use a shop once, at the start, to work out which style you actually prefer. That visit saves a year of guessing.
Then split the spending: most of it on the blend, and a smaller amount on two or three single origins a year.
Keep one supplier for the daily tea so the taste does not drift, and rotate the single origins freely.
Check the harvest date on everything, because red tea keeps well, and that is also what lets sellers sell old stock.
A reasonable pattern is a 250 gram bag every two or three months, plus 100 grams of something interesting each season.
Do not buy in bulk at a market, and do not buy a single origin from a seller who cannot name it.
Whatever the channel, ask for the year. Anyone who cannot tell you is selling tea of unknown age.
Two cups a day is roughly 500 grams in six months, and that figure should decide how much you buy at once.