What Does ''Hand-Blended'' Tea Even Mean?

If you're used to the instant gratification of going to a grocery store, spotting a tea that looks appealing on the shelf, and throwing it in your cart, it might be frustrating having to wait for your order to arrive. You've probably even wondered why we tack on those extra few days before we ship. Well, we're so glad you asked! (And if you didn't ask, just play along for the sake of this post!)

How Orders Are Made

Every order is hand-blended and hand-packed at our headquarters in sunny Los Angeles. But what does that even mean? It means that you won't find conveyor belts or mass-producing machinery in our warehouse. Instead, you'll find our production team carefully mixing each tea blend, painstakingly going through a quality assurance process, and packing and weighing every bag of tea.

Why Hand-Blend?

Obviously, it'd be a lot easier to just use machines. We'd probably produce significantly more tea if we did! However, we've chosen to do things by hand because we believe in artistry and intention of tea. There are a couple of benefits to hand-blending tea, too! 

When you hand-blend, you're also being gentler to the leaves. We use whole leaves of tea of a higher tea grade, so it's important to us that we don't crush our leaves in an industrial blender. Hand-blending allows for smaller batches, too. We can make small batches of tea to order to ensure freshness and if we mess up and add the wrong ingredient, we only have to throw out a little bit of tea! (We're just teasing on that last part, but blending small batches does allow for optimum freshness!)

What That Means For You

Hand-blending and packing take some time. We hustle as hard as we can, but that's why we don't ship a box of tea to you as soon as you order it. If we did, that would mean that the tea you ordered was already sitting on a shelf in a warehouse collecting dust. And we don't think you'd want that. Or maybe you would? To each their own. 

Next time you order from Art of Tea, rest easy knowing one of our tea'm members is scooping out fresh tea into a hand-labeled bag just for you. We hope knowing how much love we put into your order makes it taste that much better!

Want to learn more about tea? Check out our guide on all things tea here.