Every tea below was purchased at full retail price, brewed a minimum of six times across three water temperatures, and re-cupped blind a week later. Scores are out of 100 and are revisited each season.
The comparison chart
Sorted by score. The value column matters more than most people expect: three of the top five here cost under sixty cents a cup.
| Tea | Type | Harvest | Score | Dominant notes | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uji Sencha, first flush | Green | Spring 2026 | 93 | Grass, melon, sweet finish | $0.71 / cup |
| Dong Ding, medium roast | Oolong | Autumn 2025 | 91 | Toasted grain, stone fruit, mineral | $0.58 / cup |
| Yunnan Dian Hong, golden bud | Black | Spring 2025 | 90 | Cocoa, sweet potato, no bitterness | $0.49 / cup |
| Assam orthodox GFBOP | Black | Second flush 2025 | 88 | Malt, raisin, holds milk | $0.31 / cup |
| Gyokuro, shaded 20 days | Green | Spring 2025 | 88 | Umami, seaweed, thick body | $1.42 / cup |
| Tieguanyin, jade style | Oolong | Spring 2026 | 87 | Lilac, cream, light roast | $0.63 / cup |
| Darjeeling first flush | Black | Spring 2026 | 86 | Muscatel, brisk, thin at 3 min | $0.88 / cup |
| Hojicha, deep roast | Green (roasted) | 2025 | 86 | Toast, caramel, very low caffeine | $0.27 / cup |
| Silver Needle white | White | Spring 2025 | 85 | Hay, cucumber, needs 5 min | $1.10 / cup |
| Chamomile, whole flower | Herbal | 2026 | 84 | Apple skin, honey, no dust | $0.19 / cup |
| Shou Puerh, 2018 loose | Puerh | 2018 | 83 | Earth, damp wood, mellows by cup 3 | $0.44 / cup |
| Peppermint, cut leaf | Herbal | 2026 | 79 | Sharp menthol, thins fast | $0.16 / cup |
How scoring works
Judged dry, on the warmed leaf, and off the wet leaf after the first infusion. A tea that smells better than it tastes loses points here, not later.
Weight and texture in the mouth. Thin, watery liquor is the most common failure in cheap green tea and the hardest to hide behind good marketing.
What is still there thirty seconds after the swallow. Long, sweet returning finish is the single strongest signal of leaf quality.
Does infusion three resemble infusion one? Does a second tin from the same vendor match? Batch variance costs real points.
Cost per cup against the category average. An excellent tea at an absurd price will not reach the top of this chart.
Packaging, brand story, awards, and anything the vendor told us. Tins do not get scored.
Long-form logs
At 165 °F for 70 seconds this is one of the best cups I have had this year: cut grass, honeydew, a clean sweet close with no drying edge. At 185 °F it collapses into something closer to spinach water.
Second infusion at 40 seconds held up. Third was noticeably thinner but still pleasant. Not a forgiving tea — buy it only if you own or will buy a variable-temperature kettle.
Verdict: the best green on the chart, with a caveat attached.
Six genuine gongfu infusions from 5 g in a 100 ml pot. Opens toasty and grain-sweet, moves through apricot around round three, then settles into a long mineral finish that keeps developing after you put the cup down.
Western brewing works too — 3 g, 8 oz, 195 °F, three minutes — but you lose the arc that makes this tea interesting.
Verdict: the best cost-per-enjoyment ratio we tested this year.
The whole-head format is the entire story. Tea-bag chamomile is milled flower dust, which extracts fast, tastes like hay and turns bitter past four minutes. Whole heads extract slowly and taste of apple skin and light honey.
Steep covered, five minutes, water just off the boil. Uncovered, roughly a third of the aroma leaves with the steam — we measured the difference across ten paired cups and it was obvious every time.
Verdict: nineteen cents a cup. Nothing else here is close on value.
