There are only a few rules of quality that apply across all styles of tea, but one piece of advice that is commonly given to new tea drinkers is to look for whole leaves. In fact, we have given this piece of advice many times ourselves. When shopping for loose leaf teas with complex flavor, looking for intact leaves is one of our highest priorities. But some teas, like English Breakfast blends or matcha, are always crushed or powdered, even at the highest grades. What is the real benefit of brewing whole leaf teas, and can there be advantages to using broken leaves, as well?

Whether you’re making your own holiday wishlist or shopping for your favorite tea lover, we know the best gifts can make every day better. Here are six great gifts to enhance any tea drinker’s daily cup.

We readily admit that we are pretty nerdy about our teas. With our focus on single origin tea, the variations in natural flavor are endless, and we are constantly tasting new harvests. A tea journal is hugely helpful in keeping track of it all. But for the casual drinker, it may seem like overkill. Here are four reasons we think a tea journal might be helpful for you too, no matter how many teas there are in your collection.

Tasting notes used to describe natural products like tea are often ephemeral and hard to understand, because our sense of taste is actually multifaceted. Taste includes not only the sensation on your tongue, but also the way the tea smells and the texture that lingers in your mouth. Written tasting notes can be used to describe any or all of these aspects, and help distinguish subtle differences between natural teas. Whether you want to keep track of what you love in a tea or just make a little more sense of tea descriptions online, understanding these three parts of flavor will help make it easier.

Many people look to tea's caffeine content to jump start their mornings, but others prefer to make tea a part of relaxing evenings. After all, is there anything more serene than curling up with a steaming mug of tea? Unfortunately, the same natural caffeine that makes tea energizing in the morning can also keep you up at night.

For some, the balancing effects of L-theanine are enough to make any tea relaxing, despite the caffeine. But for those who are sensitive to the stimulant, here are our top five teas with low (or no) caffeine - sure to be utterly relaxing in the evening.

One of the biggest divides in the tea world concerns slurping, and whether or not it improves the flavor of a tea. While considered rude by proper English rules, we always advocate slurping your sip for the best flavor experience. Our favorite technique is to sip a small amount, then gently draw air in through pursed lips to aerate the liquid. While it can take a little practice to get right, we’ve got three good reasons for you to give it a try.

With so many different tea styles and culturally distinct brewing customs from around the world, it can be difficult to know what equipment is best suited for making your favorite teas. In truth, most pots are capable of brewing almost any tea. But just as geographic isolation has led to the development of many different tea styles, it has also created parallel developments in teaware. Many teas are complemented by the teaware from nearby regions, where local tastes have refined teaware designs to best suit their most common teas.

Now that modern globalization has made these local specialties available around the world, the connections between tea and teaware are more obscure. Most important distinctions between brewing vessels can be boiled down to the size, material, and strainer type. With these factors in mind, here are our top teaware recommendations for each category of tea.

In the modern age, green tea has become one of the most popular styles of tea around the globe, thanks to modern shipping technology and heavily marketed health benefits. But among the common bottled, bagged, and flavored blends, it can be hard to discern the huge variety of natural flavors that result from terroir and crafting techniques. Though there are literally thousands of unique varieties and styles, one easy distinction to make when shopping for loose leaf green tea is between Chinese and Japanese styles.

Despite the fact that both tea traditions stem from the same early Chinese techniques of steaming and compressing green tea leaves, the two styles have diverged dramatically during the intervening millennia. Today, green teas from these two countries contrast in almost every way; from the growing process, to the methods used for crafting, all the way down to the way they’re brewed and served.