Tea packaging is a strange mix of genuine technical information and pure decoration, printed in the same font at the same size. This guide separates them.
Grades: what the letters mean
You will see acronyms like FTGFOP on Indian and Sri Lankan black tea. They are real, standardised, and less useful than they look. Broken down: OP is Orange Pekoe, which describes leaf size and wholeness, not orange and not flavour. F adds Flowery, T adds Tippy, G adds Golden, another F adds Finest. Each letter indicates more unbroken leaf and more young golden tips.
What the grade tells you honestly: the physical size and appearance of the leaf. Whole leaf brews more slowly and more sweetly than broken leaf, and dust in a bag brews fast and hard.
What it does not tell you: whether the tea tastes good. We have cupped a plain OP Assam that outscored an FTGFOP1 from a neighbouring estate by four points. The grade describes the sorting, not the growing.
Chinese and Japanese teas mostly do not use this system at all. They name the cultivar, region and picking standard instead — which is considerably more informative.
Harvest date is the real signal
If a package shows a harvest date, that vendor is confident about turnover. If it shows only a “best before” two years out, the tea may have been sitting for a year before it reached you. For green tea, that difference is the whole cup.
“First flush” means the first picking of the season, typically March to April. It is not automatically better — Darjeeling first flush is light and floral, second flush is the muscatel one most people actually prefer. It is a date, not a compliment.
Origin claims, single estate and blends
“Single estate” means one farm. It is meaningful and usually costs more. “Product of India” on a blend means the tea may come from dozens of gardens and change between batches, which is why supermarket breakfast blends taste identical year after year — consistency is the product.
Neither is inherently better. A well-made blend is reliable and cheap. A single-estate tea is variable and interesting. Decide which you are shopping for before you compare prices.
Five phrases that mean nothing
- “Hand-picked.” Almost all specialty tea is hand-picked. It is a description of the industry, not a distinction.
- “Artisanal.” No definition, no standard, no meaning.
- “Antioxidant-rich.” True of all tea, including the cheapest bag on the shelf.
- “Award-winning.” Ask which award. Several are pay-to-enter.
- “Ancient tree” without an age or region. A widely abused claim in the puerh market.
Conversely, phrases worth paying attention to: a named cultivar, a named farm or co-operative, an elevation, a specific harvest month, and a processing description such as “20 days shaded” or “medium charcoal roast, three passes”. Specificity is the tell. Vendors who know their supply chain write specifically.
What price per cup should look like
Convert everything to cost per cup before comparing. A 50 g tin at $18 sounds expensive; at 3 g per cup that is roughly a dollar a cup, which for a good oolong is reasonable and for a bagged breakfast tea would be absurd.
| Category | Reasonable | Getting expensive | Suspiciously cheap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everyday black | $0.25–0.45 | Over $0.80 | Under $0.12 |
| Chinese green | $0.40–0.70 | Over $1.20 | Under $0.20 |
| Japanese green | $0.60–1.00 | Over $1.60 | Under $0.30 |
| Oolong | $0.50–0.90 | Over $1.50 | Under $0.25 |
| Herbal | $0.15–0.30 | Over $0.55 | Under $0.08 |
Remember that oolong and puerh give multiple infusions from the same leaf, which roughly halves their real cost per cup. Our review chart lists cost per cup for every tea we have scored, so you can see how these ranges play out in practice.