Welcome to the Odds & Ends Untea Sampler, in this box we have included everything but the tea leaf.
The magnificent Camellia Sinensis and its close cousins have so much to offer, but often we only see the new growth and tender buds made into tea. What we wanted to do for this sampler is to look at all the other wonderful offerings the tea plant produces and feature the ingenuity of our tea farmers striving to bring these oft overlooked elements into your tea session.
All these "unteas" are incredibly drinkanble, though they're precisely not 'loose leaf tea'.
The aged tea seeds brew up into a light, rasin like broth that must be experienced at least once, perhaps at night. We get much more fruity flavors out of this untea, especially compare to the other offerings in the box.
The tea flowers in this sampler meanwhile were our first attempt at making what would become the Sugar Buds. In flavor and profile, they are closer to the tea flowers we sold in past years, and better represent the tea flowers known and enjoyed to Chinese tea drinkers today. They can make wonderful additions to any green tea or green oolong.
The kukicha is, however, the real show stealer in this sampler. Made from tea stems and pocessed like a yellow tea, it is a roasty, woody, comfy delight that is functionally consumed only in Southern Shanxi.
The long-requested Yabao is a fascinating example of a tea that isn't quite tea. These ridged little buds are not the buds of a tea leaf, but rather the bud of a tea branch! They have an intensely woody, hoppy, spicy flavor to them that is quintesential Spring. Carefully picked from old trees in the Huazhu Liangzi mountain range where the farmers want to keep the energy in leaf production rather than branch production, when done properly, this is a conscientius way to prune a tea tree before it branches out. This tea is actually the very first of the 2025 teas we are offering!
The Sampler contains four heat-sealed bags of the following unteas:
In the set:
- 20g Aged 2019 Tea Seeds (Wu Family)
- 20g Baked Tea Flowers (Loushui Cooperative + One River Tea)
- 20g Yellow Kukichha (Jiahong Factory)
- 20g Yabao Tea Tree Buds (Spring 2025 Huazhu Liangzi)
The tea is packaged in 20g heat-sealed bags. Recommended brewing is 6-7 grams of tea in a 3-4 ounce gaiwan; thus, this sample set offers two chances to taste each tea and compare with the others.
We are very excited to share this tea tasting opportunity, as it is one of the few ways to really understand the complexities of certain types of teas.
