Tea Shop

Tea Shop has two addresses in Alicante: a street store at Calle Pintor Cabrera 29, a few minutes from the Mercado Central, and a second inside the Plaza Mar 2 centre on Avinguda de Dénia. Between them they cover the two ways people shop in this city — the walk through the centre and the trip to the mall — and both carry the same catalogue, which is the largest single-origin range on sale in Alicante.

What separates the range from a supermarket shelf is how the products are named. A black tea here is not "Ceylon" but a Ceylon Quality Blend F.B.O.P.F.E.X.S.; the Assam is a Maud F.B.O.P.; the Kenyan is a Marinyin G.F.O.P. Those letters are leaf grades, and printing them means the buyer is choosing between specific lots rather than between flavours. The same discipline runs through the greens and the oolongs: a Japan Hojicha, an organic Gunpowder, a Tie Kuan Yin, a Milky Oolong from China.

The size ladder is the other reason to know this shop. Most of the catalogue starts at 100 g and climbs through 250 g and 500 g to a full kilo, with the price rising cleanly at each step, so a tea that works can be re-bought in quantity without a penalty. The scarcer leaf breaks the pattern and starts at 50 g instead — the Milky Oolong does, which is the sensible way to sell a tea that not everybody will finish.