Legends roam about these plants and the traditions are observed until today. Each cup of the warm beverage is prepared with a lot of care, and some of the species demand a lot of patience as well. There is something elevating and elegant in sipping that steamy mug of tea in the afternoon. It’s a legendary tradition – in England, everything stops at 5 o’clock for tea.
How much would you really pay for the perfect cup of tea?
Tienchi Flower Tea – $170 per kilogram
This tea is renowned in China and it looks like small broccoli. Science calls the Tienchi Flower Panax notoginseng, where Panax means “panacea” – a cure for everything. It is considered to be one of the healthiest teas in the world. Drinking it helps lower cholesterol, reduce insomnia, improve blood circulation and alleviate heart problems. It is sweet with a subtle, cool minty flavor.
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Darjeeling Tea – $200 per kilogram
It comes from India and has got a pleasant, floral scent. The authentic Darjeeling is strongly fragrant and has got big leaves with green tips, dense and spicy aroma, very soft taste and it matches well with milk.
Darjeeling is often referred to as the “Champagne of teas,” since its musky-sweet taste reminds of muscat wine. While it is classified as a kind of black tea, it is usually less oxidized. The ideal Darjeeling is described as “pleasantly astringent and optimistically bright in both taste and color, sweet, fragrant, easy-going, but complicated enough to keep you interested.”
Silver Tips Imperial Tea – $400 per kilogram
Silver Tips Imperial is a hand-made, semi-fermented, light Oolong Tea. It reminds of the Darjeeling Tea, but it is more expensive. For hundreds of years, this tea has been reserved exclusively for the royal Imperial family. It can be gathered only two days in the year, in spring, surrounded by the early morning mist. People use only the tip of the plant leaf, which is covered with fair, silver moss.
Gyokuro Tea – $650 per kilogram
Try to boil a fine Japanese Green Tea like Gyokuro and the bitterness will kill all the pleasure. It is best prepared in water of 60 C and tasted cool. 620 years have passed since the ancestors of the modern Japanese started enjoying Gyokuro tea. It has got a sweet taste and contains a lot of amino acids and Vitamin C. You can enjoy several servings of the Gyokuro with one tea bag. The Japanese welcome with it their most honorable guests. It tastes of fresh sweet softness.
Poo Poo Pu-Erth Tea – $1000 per kilogram
Eating or drinking foods and beverages, prepared from the waste of animals is not as rare and unusual behavior. Even Argan Oil – the so-called Liquid Gold comes from the nuts which grow in the waste of tree-climbing goats in Morocco. Poo Poo Puerh is made of excrement from the grain moths, which feed on the tea leaves. It has got healing qualities.
Yellow Gold Tea Buds – $3000 per kilogram
This tea is a green, floral oolong tea, which is very beneficial. You can buy it only in Singapore. Its tea buds are lavished in 24 karat gold, which when infused, pleases the senses well and creates a delicately golden and floral unforgettable aftertaste. There is a deep note of earth to this tea, which makes it truly refreshing.
Tieguanyin Tea – $3000 per kilogram
If you take the fresh-picked spring tienguanyin and if you put in a little extra effort – you will prepare a mind-blowing tea.
It is infused with boiling water. You do not drink the first steeping. It is a wash. The leaves of this tea have to be boiled 7 times, and afterwards, they taste like chestnuts. The tea has got the most luscious, sweet, lingering aftertaste. You need a few small cups to enjoy this tea in small portions. It just smells like the essence of spring.
Vintage Narcissus Wu Yi Oolong Tea – $6 500 per kilogram
A variety of oolong tea, this tea has been prepared for more than 50 years now and it is named after Narcissus from the Greek Mythology. It comes with a flavor of flowers, wood and chocolate. It’s one of the really exquisite teas harvested in the Fujian Province of China.
Panda Dung Tea – $70000 per kilogram
Nowadays pandas are doing so much more than practicing Kung Fu and eating bamboo. They help produce one of the weirdest and most eccentric drinks actually in existence. Tea made of panda droppings!
This tea is made from the excrements of pandas, but how exactly? The pandas are fed on bamboo and their excrements, which are rich in vitamins, are used for the improvement of the soil where the tea tree grows. Since their digestive system is poor, pandas consume only 30% of the fibers and nutrients in their food – which means more than 70% is left in the excrement. Panda’s waste makes for a tea with a mature and nutty taste.
Da Hong Pao – $1 200 000 per kilogram
The taste from the most expensive tea in the world stays for long. The legend of Da Hong Pao is very lyrical: Nine dragons were fighting in the skies with an immortal person above the mountains of Wu Yi – a Chinese province, where many black teas are produced. The Immortal won and the dragons turned into the nine peaks of the Wu Yi Mountain. The Immortal then left behind him in the mountain several tea bushes, to remind the people of his victory. The monks cared for these original bushes, and the tea from them magically healed a famous scholar, who fell ill just before his exams. The legend has it, that the mother of the emperor of the Ming dynasty was heavily ill, but advised by the scholar, she was able to heal with this tea. The Emperor then instructed that the bushes were surrounded by big red robes. Da Hong Pao means Big Red Robe. It is preserved from the time of the emperor until today.
Image Copyright: A Girl With Tea, License: CC BY 2.0
