We are passionate about tea and want our tea customers to experience great tea with exquisite flavor, not just 'average' tea.

Our tea is some of the finest and freshest tea available...anywhere. We say this with confidence because we hold our tea (and ourselves!) to very high standards.

We have been specialty tea buyers and passionate tea drinkers for 35 years - tea is our business. During this time, we have honed and refined our palates to the subtle (and not so subtle) differences between grades of tea.

We are well aware that all tea is not created equal. Some teas are available for sale on the wholesale tea market with as many as 8 grades at 8 different price points. What we do is analyze price to value. We may not always purchase the most 'expensive' offering (for many reasons) but we are committed to purchasing skillfully made, high quality leaf at a fair price for the grower. This provides you, our customer, with high quality tea at an affordable price. This is the basis of growing relationships from farm to cup.  Unfortunately, what we reject ends up in someone else's cup.

Quite a few teas today are exported from developing tea-supplying nations into more 'known' locations and passed off as a more expensive tea. Many well-known teas are in such high demand that counterfeit leaf is beginning to be substituted for the "real McCoy".

Tea Trekker teas are carefully sourced to insure that all our leaf is from the place it is stated to be from.

Our carefully developed network of trusted tea agents know that we will only purchase top grades of authentic tea, and are not interested in the rest. We never purchase tea 'blind' - we always request tasting samples so that we can:

1.  determine the provenance of the leaf
2.  check the freshness of the leaf
3.  determine the season of year that the tea was made
4.  evaluate the appearance of the leaf
5.  taste the flavor of the tea
6.  savor the aroma of the tea

As often as we can, we travel to tea-producing countries to source our teas and to learn as much as we can about how and why tea is grown and manufactured. We believe that it is essential to understand the culture and tea drinking ways of each tea producing country to fully grasp the reason for the uniqueness of all great tea.

We understand the hard work and dedicated commitment required of tea growers and producers to send their hand-made, high-quality teas to market. Selling this type of tea through TeaTrekker.com encourages small farmers and artisan production, especially in our modern age that presents so many opportunities for residents of rural tea villages to leave home and find jobs in the cities.

Through Tea Trekker - and our book The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide - we are committed to sharing the tea knowledge that others have shared with us and to help our customers experience the beauty of high quality, artisan tea.

To your health,

Mary Lou and Robert Heiss,
 'The Professors of Tea'