Korean Tea Questions

Since the topic was brought up and we have quite an authority on the
subject, it is an area I am fairly ignorant of and would love to learn
a bit more or at least enough as a jumping off point for further
exploration. I'm not sure if the topic has come up in the past but I'd
love to hear from anyone with any experience or tasting notes.

I have a number of Korean friends and my father had been stationed on
the DMZ for some time before I was born, but my father's recollection
mainly involves just jasmine green tea and even of that he wasn't
really into tea while there. My other Korean acquaintances are also
not really into tea and their "tea" generally consists of Ginger root
boiled to make a strong ginger tea, instant ginseng powder tea,
instant chrysanthemum powdered tea, JuJuBe teabags, and maybe some
sencha. So as you can see my experience and knowledge is fairly
limited and not really centered around real tea per-se.

Is this common? Are the flavored/fruit/herbal teas more prevalent in
every day drinking?

I do know most Korean teas tend to be greens (Nok-Cha) with a touch of
oolong. But of these greens there are a number of choices, what is the
most common Korean tea? What three teas (or more) would be a good
starting point that would cover a range of the Korean tea spectrum?

Finally, what vendors are reputable and well stocked in these teas? I
have seen a few sites with Korean tea sections but they almost seem to
be an after thought.

Thanks to any and all who can be of assistance!
- Dominic

On 2008-03-06, An Sonjae <ansonjae@sogang.ac.kr> wrote:

> Another topic: I was puzzled by the Franchia site, that says they sell
> tea in measures of '1 pound including packaging'. The boxes
> illustrated look to me to be the standard Korean model, which can only
> hold 100 grams of tea. Do they mean that the remaining 400 grams are
> cardboard? Caveat emptor!

I'm pretty sure it's actually even less - as I warned in my post, I
think it's 3 oz of tea, so about 85g. The containers in their retail
store are labelled prominently, but I don't know why they aren't clearer
about it on their website. I think they just mean that the shipping
weight is a pound, because I'm sure their packaging with the tea in it
doesn't weigh a full pound.

The place you mention in LA (Chasaengwon) is the place that I was saying
I've been meaning to visit. I'll try and get around to checking it out
sometime soon and report back.

I'd be interested in hearing what the price range tends to be in Korea
for the different grades of tea you mention (realizing, of course, that
the price range is probably huge).

w

my Korean friends in LA and also going to couple korean restaurants,
mostly drank barley "tea"
at korean supermarkets they have lots of all kinds of root teabag
teas, some green, and lots of barley.