I’ve never heard of Puripan Tea Garden until my cousin was visiting a while back.  Knowing how much I enjoy drinking tea, she gave me a bag of Puripan’s organic jasmine green tea.  The tea shop is located at Santana Row in San Jose.  They specializes in loose leaf green, white, oolong, and other herbal teas.

These green teas are shaped into little round balls called “pearls”.  The leaves open up once it’s brewed.  As much as I like green tea, I didn’t really like this particular green tea.  I don’t know if it’s the “loose leaf” factor or how I brewed it.  I even brew with filtered water too.  I found this jasmine green tea to be too bitter.  And the jasmine scent was meant to be nice, but it ended up giving me a headache instead. Just so I wouldn’t waste this good bag of tea, I let my mom give it a try.  And she actually ended up loving it!  Now she is drinking it all the time.

Photo of Puripan Tea Garden from Santana Row Shopping Center.

Puripan Tea Garden retails many varieties of loose leaf tea, which is suppose to be the best grade of tea available.  I’ve been wanting to stop by soon and see what other great teas are at the shop.  There are plenty of good online reviews about their service and selection too.  The best part being they let you sample the teas before making a purchase.

Even if you can’t visit the shop, you can still visit their nice website and browse the selection of green, white, oolong, and other herbal varieties.  Since I am into oolong at the moment, I think I want to try  WUYI oolong tea.  A description from Puripan:

Known as “Profound Orchid,” this unique tea is harvested on the cliffs of China’s northern Fujian province Wuyi Mountains, where the soil, climate and unique tea bushes create exquisite oolong.

Smooth, rich body and classical roasted aroma with sweet notes of raisin/sugar, honeysuckle, and roasted barley. Lingering sweet finish.  $5.99 for 2 oz.

Did it say an aroma of honeysuckle in the end?  I love the smell of honeysuckle.  The scent is a little less intense then jasmine, but still very nice.