Valentine's Day Chocolates

We just received our order of Valentine's Chocolates from Vintage Plantations.

The boxes smell sooo good! We have a limited supply of these delicious truffles,

so stop in this weekend and pick up sweets for your sweet!

Why we don't use tea balls...

Hello tea people!

We just got a new shipment of Ti Quan Yin - Spring Floral tea in the shop. We tasted it against the Traditional Ti Quan Yin that we already had in stock and the difference is amazing. They're both delicious, but for different reasons. We welcome you to come taste the difference in our tasting room this weekend.

We also took this opportunity to share with you why we prefer to use infuser baskets rather than the more widely known tea ball or tea spoon infusers. For full-leaf tea, the size of the leaves can drastically increase with steeping. We believe that the flavors that emerge when allowing the leaves to freely mix with the water are unbeatable.

Ti Quan Yin - Spring Floral

1 teaspoon of tea - dry vs. steeped

Hope to see you this weekend to taste the difference for yourself!

Tea Bar closed today 2/2

REMINDER:

The Tea Bar will be closed today
Thursday, February 2

Due to kitchen renovations.

Therefore,we will be unable to provide personal tastings

in the Tasting room today.

We will make a few pots of tea to taste from.

Please enjoy our teas on tap.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

The Tea Lounge will be closed Thursday 2/2

The Tea Bar will be closed Thursday, February 2

Due to kitchen renovations.

Therefore,we will be unable to provide personal tastings

in the Tasting room on this day.

We will make a few pots of tea to taste from.

Please enjoy our teas on tap.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Welcome to the Tasting Room

When visiting the tasting room, the world of tea is at your fingertips.

We are here to teach you as much as we can about tea. The purpose of the tasting room is to try teas which will not only broaden your understanding of the tea world but encourage you to purchase some tea for your own consumption.

Walking into the tasting room, we welcome you to taste our "Teas on Tap." These teas we've chosen to highlight will expand your tea knowledge, as well as allow you to experience teas that you may not have otherwise tried.

Two of our "Teas on Tap" compare the similarities and/or differences between types of teas. (For example, Chinese vs. Japanese green teas or inherently peachy oolongs vs. peach flavored teas.) The other "Teas on Tap" include caffeinated and caffeine-free teas, that are separate from the comparison teas. These teas may be chosen on a whim, or just a tea we want to highlight for that day.

In addition to our "Teas on Tap" we also welcome customers to taste one tea of their choice. This allows you a taste of that special tea you've been wanting to try. Our tea consultants are available to help you decide what that tea is based on your palate and needs.

In the tasting room, we sell almost all of our teas loose at a beginning purchase point of 2 ounces. If you are interested in buying larger amounts, we can cater to that as well. We also welcome you to bring in your empty tea tins to be refilled at a discount. Because of the specialty nature of some teas, we cannot offer this for every tea we carry, but for the basics it's a good way to save money and reduce waste.

To keep up to date with the store, visit the main blog at harneyteashop.blogspot.com where we post events, sales, highlighted teas and most current lunch menu.

Happy New Year!

The Chinese year 4710 begins today. Happy New Year... it's the year of the Dragon!

Happy National Hot Tea Month!

Hello tea people!

Thank you all for making 2011 such a wonderful year. We had great fun with great tea masters including TsuYoshi Sugimoto, James Norwood Pratt, and of course our resident tea men John and Michael Harney.

We drank a lot of great tea last year too! We saw Wild Wuyi Black, the earthy and meaty Chinese black tea, come and go. We had our first taste at an Indonesian black tea and a Darjeeling oolong tea. We are still keeping an eye on the effects of the unfortunate events in Japan, and are doing our best to help their economy by buying (and drinking!) delicious Japanese green tea.

This weekend we are enjoying some Lapsang Souchong in honor of Sherlock Holmes' 158th birthday. (It was his favorite tea.)