Yeah, they are the poshest tea shop in London, of course they're expensive. If you know of a more affordable place with shipping and high quality, I'm all ears.
It is THE problem for me: tea become "posh" in Europe. You have tea dust from Lipton in bags on one end of the spectrum, posh tea which costs about 100x to its origin (26€/$ per 50g! 520€ for a kilo! It is insane, it is lifestyle price, not food/grocery price!) on the other end of the spectrum and nothing in-between.
Ok, Germany or Netherlands never were known for tea tradition, but UK was THE Tea country. UK created Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon teas in the first place! How did this happen?
Do we speak about "black" ("red" in Chinese classification) tea?
To be honest, I've tried many red teas from China and all of them... Very Chinese.
It is not bad at all (some of them are very interesting!, but it is other style compared to Ceylon, Darjeeling and Assam teas (which are not the same too, but close to each other than to Chinese red tea).
Different styles of green ad white teas I like too, but as specialty, not on as day-to-day many-time-a-day go-to drink.
