How do we determine what teas to carry? Despite our wide selection of teas across all categories, we only offer a small taste of the wide world of tea. People often ask where we get our teas, and the answer is: a variety of domestic and international wholesalers, as well as direct from tea estates and farmers around the world. We offer not just great teas, but unique and special teas with a story behind them, teas from women-owned farms and producers, and teas that fit the Callisto vibe. No one tea supplier has everything we need, so we’re constantly on the lookout for new teas.
In addition, we vary our selection with the seasons, to let our customers reflect on the seasonality of tea crops and have new experiences to look forward to. We all have our favorite teas that we come back to time and again, but some of us need a little excuse to try something new. We curate a collection whittled down from thousands of teas, maintaining a database to track what we’ve tried, what we’ve liked, and what might be a good option for the future.
It starts with the Tea House staff trying every sample we can get a hold of, and narrowing down to a smaller collection of contenders. Then we bring in the tasting group - seasoned tea tasters and casual sippers - to get a diverse set of feedback. We brew each tea the same way we would at the shop, and we try them more than once, because the energy each person brings to the tea affects their own experience of it.
Once we’ve found a tea we want to share with our customers, it’s time for the fun part: naming the tea! We’ve had some wild suggestions (we’re still rejecting our brother’s favorite recommendation: “Fragrant Gravity”) to come up with a name that captures the mood or experience of the tea: from Homeric idioms to Goddesses of the earth, to song titles from some of our favorite artists.
We hope you enjoy the fruits of these efforts! As always, if you have a specific tea you’re longing for, let us know, we’ll see if we can track it down!