I’m born in Poland during the communist regimes reign. Back then there was only one tea available: Black Tea.
We mostly drank it with a slice of lemon and some sugar. To this day this is my favourite way of drinking tea.
But I also enjoy what I started calling “Queen Elisabeth Tea” when my daughter asked what it is, same black tea but with milk and sugar. She likes it a lot too.
Last but not least, I really enjoyed Japanese tea, we went to a special tea house and they showed us how to brew it and drink it. It was some special green tea, very delicious!
I recently ordered some loose leaf Chinese pu-erh that smelled like fresh soil after a rain - in the best way. It was the most soul warming tea I’ve ever tasted and I’m sure it wasn’t even the authentic stuff. I would kill to know the best place to order more if anyone knows.
I started a gong fu tea kick early in the pandemic. My go-to supplier has been Yunnan Sourcing. They have two sites, one is .us and ships from their warehouse in Oregon and the other is .com, which ships direct from China. The difference is mainly selection and shipping time, where the chinese site has a better selection, with much longer shipping.
I highly recommend their curated samplers and, if you enjoy the tea, getting a tea pick and learning to use it (the idea being to minimize breaking the leaves into powder which causes increased bitterness due to surface area:volume ratio).