Red Circle Tea

BREWING THE BAY: Private tea classes, Chinese tea expert who loves practicing her Cantonese with customers
I met Sina and her associates at the SF International Tea Festival and was really impressed. Her Cantonese is off-​the-​charts good (she puts many Chinese-​Americans to shame) and her passion for tea is obvious to anyone who speaks to her.
I sampled the red tea, honey oolong, magnolia and jasmine pearl. The first three were great quality, perfectly brewed and delicious. The jasmine pearl had grown bitter and cold, and had a strange metallic aftertaste that I didn’t care for. Prices are slightly higher than other Asian tea shops I’ve found, which is the reason for the docked star.

Giving up coffee has been one of the hardest things I’ve done for the sake of my health. To compensate, I’ve been cultivating my taste in tea.
As fortune would have it, I was given some Red Circle Teas as gifts: Gold Medal Jasmine Green Pearls, Ying De Red, and White Leaf Dan Chong Oolong.
They have all been exquisite — delicate flavors without bitterness, even with longer steeping (as I like to do sometimes, to get all the medicinal benefits. Or other times I just forget and wander away from my cup). I steep each serving at least three times to get the most out of it, because I know these are precious specimens!
The White Leaf Dan Chong Oolong is particularly delicious — floral, complex.
And best of all no coffee-​like side effects, even if tea does have caffeine.
I haven’t been to their tastings yet — I live in the East Bay and don’t get to the Mission often. But if I had the chance I would jump on it.

A unique tea tasting experience for sure — flights may vary.
To echo the other reviews, these ladies are passionate about tea, sharing, and learning. I attended a Red Circle event and it was really well organized. After a short presentation, we began tasting greens, blacks, puerh’s etc. Some of the teas were award winning, rare, and all had been selected by these tea brokers personally. If you’re interested in the region, the people, or just the product, these ladies will educate you. Tea is fairly priced. Tea bits were absolutely delish and included tea bites like warm short bread cookies — bang’n.
Note: you can be a tea novice, and they will tell you have to steep and care for your leaves for maximum brewing. However, you tea experts will likely enjoy this event the most because of their specialty leaves, high quality, and cultural understanding. This is not cheap tea — but thrifty spenders might enjoy smaller quantities. One thing I didn’t like was that if they run out, you might not be able to get something you waited to buy.
Oh yeah, and I got a cool free bag with my purchase — matches my Unilocal sweat and tears wrist ban.

If you’re searching for high-​quality tea, definitely check out Red Circle Tea! Sina (the owner) is very knowledgeable and passionate about tea while still being super friendly and down-​to-​earth! :)
I would also highly recommend the tea tastings that Sina offers in Glen Park (take a look at the Events page on the website)! For $ 15, we sampled a flight of maybe five or six different teas (pre-​Qing Ming and Jasmine pearl greens, Ti Kuan Yin, Big Red Robe, and Dan Chong oolongs, and a pu-​erh that normally run $ 20−50/oz!) with several steepings for each tea while Sina went over tea preparation and told stories of her personal trips to China to establish relationships with the tea farmers that enable her to obtain the «really good stuff» :) Listening to her amazing journeys while taking in the delightful fragrances and sipping these teas made for a wonderful, lazy Saturday afternoon. Her tea classes are for small groups so there’s lots of individualized attention and your questions will definitely get answered — my friend and I were actually the only two there for the first two hours of the class we attended so basically had a private lesson and tasting! :) They’re run open house style (ours was from 12 – 4 PM but you can show up and leave at any time during that time frame).
If you can’t make a tasting, she’s also at the New Taste Market Place on some Saturdays and her prettily-​packaged tea gift sets are available at the Fatted Calf charcuterie shop in Hayes Valley. I definitely picked some up as holiday gifts for tea lovers! :) And, you can also order all of the teas online through the website.
I love how she only has a small selection of teas available at a given time (so I’m not overwhelmed with choices) and has personally tasted and written notes on every tea she sells — you can tell that she takes a lot of pride in her teas and has gone to a lot of trouble to find the best-​quality teas available :)

Red Circle Tea is a great company and they really know their tea. The website is full of information on brewing and complete descriptions of every tea they sell and some cool extra’s like teapots and gift sets. I really like that they are actual people who travel to China to study tea, tea culture and to find the very best and bring it back to us!

The ladies who created Red Circle Tea are in love with tea. I did a tea tasting with them to find a tea for a sandwich shop I work for and it was amazing the depth they used to describe the teas. They chose a few teas to taste based on their experience with our food. They suggested pairings. They GUSHED about their teas but not in a salesy way — it was in an obvious love affair way.
Their teas are expensive but they are excellent quality, very flavorful and beautiful.
I highly recommend getting their advice about tea as well as their tea.

I have been studying Chinese martial arts and healing arts for over 12 years and in that time I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to travel to China 4 times to study with my teachers in Beijing. Each trip I learn something new about Chinese teas. At first I thought Puerh was just a terrible tasting tea that we drank so we could persevere during training sessions, that Jasmine was always fragrant but didn’t taste like much, and that Oolong was a really strong tasting tea that never failed to be bitter. Eventually I learned that there are low grades, medium grades, high grades and exquisitely high grades of tea. Red Circle Tea is consistently the best tea around, and I have to say, I am a tea whore; I drink it all. I go to Imperial Tea House, Samovar, Om Shan Tea, Red Blossom, any tea counter in Chinatown or Clement Street. I’ll even drink all kinds of store brands if they are handy, or the only tea offered at a mainly coffee-​obsessed café. Of the boxed teas, there are several kinds that are supposed to be higher quality, whole leaf, like Mighty Leaf, that I just feel aren’t worth drinking at all. I’d rather drink the $ 1.99 a box Hojicha that you can get at the dollar store in Japantown, or Bigelow’s even. (Actually, Peet’s boxed teas aren’t bad for a teabag tea.)
Anyway, I digress. You can imagine my delight when I tasted Red Circle Tea at a special tea tasting hosted by my favorite restaurant (while it was in Hayes Valley) Modern Tea. It was fragrant, bold, complex, rich. Each tea that they brought out was the best in its category that I had ever tasted, even though I had tasted some very special high grade teas that had been given to me by people who know tea. I wondered who are these people and how do they know so much about tea? What I found out is that the owner of Red Circle Tea is a really ardent and honest student of tea. She has a tea teacher, a renowned master, whom she studies with. She also travels to China yearly to buy from tea farmers that she trusts and has built relationships with. It is really amazing to be buying tea from someone who has this type of authenticity and tirelessness in ensuring the quality and freshness of every bag that’s sold.
Ok, I’ve probably said too much already but I’m going to say a little more anyway. There are a lot of reasons to drink tea. It is a beautiful ritual, it can be great for complimenting your meals and snack times, it is a delicious and healthy alternative to coffee, and it is an excursion into another culture. (Red Circle mainly sells Chinese tea, though I think they started offering one Japanese Sencha.) Tea is relatively less expensive than coffee, because you can steep the tea multiple times, 4 to 30 (for a really good Puerh, my new favorite). That said, it’s worth it to try really high quality tea in order to understand what you’re drinking and develop your palate. Even though the tea quality is super high, Red Circle Tea prices go from everyday drinking tea to pricey special occasion teas. The best part is that every time I go to a Red Circle Tea Tasting I learn something new about tea, I learn from new and old friends, and most importantly, I while away the time doing something I love, drinking really great tea.

@Red Circle tea there was a white lady in a red cheongsam pouring free tea samples.
It was a fine fragrant jasmine flavored
Circle Tea is self-​described as «tea aficianados who travel through asia», they sell high end teas direct to the end user.
locale: new taste marketplace (²⁄₅)
sampling: gold medal jasmine tea pearl fujian spring 2008 (2 oz $ 25)
–maybe i need lessons how to properly boil water and make tea. tea tasted kind of shallow. maybe too much water… maybe i need more patience. anywore, tea leaves smell very fragrant.
tea drips:
–sales pitch straightforward unlike some mall chains with mysterious names for their tea leaves. (place of origin stated)
–monthly tastings available at designated sites.
*new product showings
*demostrations
–combo deals available.
–Red Circle tea admits their teas cost more. maybe it’s worth it…