I drink tea over coffee (for digestive reasons), and I assume I am missing out on really good tea. Any readily-available loose-leaf tea recommendations?
I mail ordered from TeeGschwendner (https://www.teegschwendner.de/en) for years, and their quality is very solid. I stopped because our local yarn store (!) had a truly excellent looseleaf tea selection.
Sadly, going to an upscale tea place in an urban area does not guarantee you decent tea, nor are places consistent. There are places that have nice blacks and greens, but utterly miserable rooibos (this is quite common).
Thanks. I bought some loose black tea from a shop in NYC's Chelsea Market last year. I figured I would be in for a treat, but it was completely bland and tasteless. Been hesitant to splurge much since then, but will definitely be checking these recommendations.
Depending on what you mean by "really good tea". There are both varieties of tea, and then grades of quality within the same variety.
For Chinese teas easily found in the US, dragon well (longjing) and iron buddha (tie guan yin) are very drinkable green teas. Iron Buddha tends to taste a bit more metallic, leafy, and sweet, Dragon Well tends to have a warmer flavor with a tiny hint of savoriness. Both are much lighter in flavor than, say, Earl Grey, which makes them very drinkable even in large quantities, but if you're used to Earl Grey you might not be able to taste these teas. If you want a stronger, more earthy, less leafy flavor, you can find puerh fairly easily. There's a very large range of quality for puerh, so this can be a rabbit hole. As a general rule, you should only buy loose leaf for Chinese tea varieties. I've had dragon well in a bag/sachet before and it tastes like a poor facsimile.
I specifically didn't mention Jasmine because Jasmine tea is often a lower grade of quality in the US, which has the downside of tasting too leafy/bitter/heavy on tannin. If you find a higher quality loose leaf Jasmine, it's also a very drinkable tea that you might like.
In general, I personally prefer leaf-only-no-added-flavors teas, but everyone's tastes differ. What I recommend to everyone who asks is to try a lot of varieties from different countries (mainly China, Japan, India, and try white, green, red, and black varieties), try a few of the flowery/herbal/fruity blends, and settle on whatever you like.
I found a green-ish oolong tea I liked, it's one of these: http://teapedia.org/en/Formosa_oolong_tea (Formosa Jade mountain or Formosa dongding). I don't know about availability, you'll need to find a tea shop and I'm sure they have something similar.
The aroma of it is something completely different than cheaper green teas.
Be aware that you might a lot of very different (and relatively unrelated) things if you just search for "Formosa oolong". Based on your description, you might have better luck with "Taiwanese oolongs", "dingdong oolong", "high mountain oolong and "Alishan oolong".
I drink a lot of tea and my dealer of choice is uptontea.com (by coincidence I ordered $80 of tea today). Pretty much everything they have is high quality. I prefer Darjeeling black teas; try one of the cheaper blends to see if you like it. Get a good $5 strainer and you'll be good to go.
Pu'er isn't that uncommon and has a rather unique, earthy almost smoky flavor do to aging and fermentation. Personally I like it aged about 10 years as 5 is too weak and 15-20 too strong.
