Inis Tea Company prides itself on delivering tea that meets the standards of freshness and quality.  But what do we mean by that?

Freshness:  The first thing to understand is that tea is not a cooked product.  It may not go stale as fast as bread or coffee, but it does get stale eventually.  There are a few categories of tea, such as Puerhs and Dark Teas, that get better with age, however only our Dark Rose tea currently fits this description.  With the exception of this tea, the rest of our current selection of teas have more of a focus on freshness.  For tea, it can take up to six months from harvest date to arrive in most places in the US (so, for example, in Autumn Inis Tea Company is likely still selling the previous years' spring and summer harvest).  This happens due to many factors such as processing and drying time, shipping and time for the tea merchants to taste and sample each tea to make sure the current crops are worthy to be sold.  The fact that the tea is dried allows it to stay fresh for a longer period of time (up to a couple years), however given enough time, the taste will diminish.  That's why we feel it's important to endeavor to sell the freshest tea we can.  Far too many large tea companies do not make this a focus, and in many instances, allow their teas to sit on shelves for many years, allowing them to get old and stale.  There are some teas where, for various reasons, we are unable to know the exact harvest times... however, most of those teas are flavored teas and focus more on their flavor profile (eg. our blueberry tea is processed to achieve the perfect balance of taste between black tea and blueberries).  The flavor profile is what matters with these and defines the entire experience of a flavored tea.  Which leads us into quality...

Quality:  This is where the rubber meets the road.  This is where the endless quest for a better tea begins and ends.  But what exactly is quality?  You'll have noticed that all of our teas come from Asia.  Asia has a rich history of growing tea, and they have been doing it for a very, very long time.  This means several things for quality.  One is that they have unmatched expertise, handed down from generation to generation.  The other is that the plants have been cultivated over hundreds of years to produce quality tea leaves that are unsurpassed anywhere in the world.  The majority of the big tea companies sacrifice quality to keep their expenses low (the majority of their tea not even coming from Asia).  However, we believe in a superior product, and we enjoy finding it and introducing it to others.  Whenever possible, we will always tell our customers the origin of what they are drinking and as much information as possible about where it comes from.  As mentioned above, we believe more knowledge is better!