The faith in old trees

better teas, in which case men like Wu and Hu were, in fact, destroying good teas by chasing after yields.

I think the situation here might be a bit analogous to organic food – oftentimes, organic food can indeed taste better, not necessarily because it is organic, but also because it is farmed with more care and attention from the farmer, whereas the industrially produced stuff gets relatively less care and comes out not tasting as good. Yet, if all the farms in the world go organic, then a lot of people will starve, because the yield from such farms tend to be lower, with more losses and less production because of the very nature of the farming method. Likewise, winemakers often advertise when they use old vines for a wine, labeling it vieilles vignes for example, to let us know that it is made from old vines, with the implication that this makes better wine. Tea makers are also doing that, most notably with puerh but also increasingly with other types of tea, telling us that this or that is made with old tree teas. But old tree teas don’t produce as much, which, of course, is part of the reason why they are more expensive.

I suspect that this day and age, especially after the ravages of collectivization, there are very few old tree teas left in many of the major tea producing areas in China. What’s left are likely to be destroyed, unless held in private hands, so comparison between the two tend to be difficult, if not impossible. With puerh, I think it is safe to say that there’s a difference between old tree and non-old tree teas. Whether that difference is good or not, however, is really up for debate, as different people have different theories. Old trees, however, command much higher prices, even as raw leaves. It does, then, feed back into the self-fulling loop because if you were a tea processor, and you have a kilo each, one of which costs a lot more to procure, you’re likely to put more care into processing the bag that cost more. This, in turn, may result in better tea simply because you were paying more attention, thus fueling the speculation that old tree teas taste better, thus further driving up the prices. Of course, this is all speculation, but it is nevertheless worth thinking about. After all, Wu and Hu noted that there were quality issues that are distinct from yield issues; it’s too bad that they didn’t say what kind of quality problems there were with such teas.

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Tea Company Websites And Online Tea Stores: Consistent Navigation Schemes, When To Have Separate Websites

Notice that this is a completely different header...the footer on the page, incidentally, is also completely different. This confuses viewers of the website, and also slows them down. People used to exploring the store section of the site may return to the site by typing in the URL, rishi-tea.com, only to find an unfamiliar header. Similarly, someone who wanted to click one of the links on the homepage's header may have trouble finding it once they click through to the rest of the site. In the case of Rishi Tea, because most people viewing the site will view both the homepage and the store section, most users will actually encounter this inconsistency.

I think, unless absolutely necessary, it is best to avoid this sort of inconsistency. Sometimes having different toolbars is necessary in different parts of your site, but I think that it is generally better to have a common, base toolbar that is the same on the whole site, and then add additional toolbars to other sections of the site, rather than having a completely different toolbar.

As a side note, I really like Rishi Tea and I think their website is actually quite good: easy-to-use and informative. I'm picking on them in part because I like them as a company and want to draw attention to a company that I feel good about supporting.

Do not build a separate website for your "store":

Not all tea companies sell directly through their website; some brands, like most of the tea brands owned by Unilever and other large companies, have strictly informational websites. However, most tea companies sell tea online. And, if you do sell tea online, through a company-owned online store, then by all means, sell your tea on your main website and do not build a separate site for your store.

Why? People will come preferentially to your company's main website, and you will lose sales if your store is compartmentalized in a separate section or hosted on a separate domain, and not fully integrated into your site. Many people will visit your site and may not even know that you sell things online. Here's an example of a company that separates its store in a way that I think is likely causing them to lose a lot of potential sales. The following screenshot is from the homepage of Equal Exchange, a brand of fair-trade goods that sells tea, among many other products:



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