Tea Total

Tea Total began in 1995, when, as the company puts it, the words premium and tea were not commonly used together, and its founder saw a chance for tea drinkers to get a quality cup at their local café instead of a supermarket tea bag. That café heritage still shows: the wholesale side supplies hospitality, retail and specialty businesses with loose leaf, pyramid bags, storage, staff training and tea menus, and there are stockists across New Zealand. In 2018 Shelley Magee, a tea lover, left a corporate career to buy the business.

It is now a family business: Shelley's three daughters work part-time in it and her husband looks after the IT side and runs the tea machines in the warehouse on Auckland's North Shore, where more than 150 teas are blended and packed by hand. The concept store at 19F Triton Drive in Rosedale is built around smell and sight, with in-store tastings of new releases, a children's playroom and a tea club that earns a point for every NZ$ 25. Loose teas come by the 100 g: Special Blend English Breakfast from NZ$ 16.50, China Sencha Organic NZ$ 20, China Milky Oolong NZ$ 30.

The tastings are the reason to book rather than browse: around twenty teas across black, green, herbal and fruit styles in about an hour and a half, NZ$ 35 a person, or NZ$ 350 for a private group of up to twelve, all held at the Rosedale store. Beyond the 100 g bags, the list on this page adds a Premium Silver Needle at NZ$ 27.50 the 50 g, a 45 g Japanese matcha at NZ$ 29.50 and organic chamomile flowers at NZ$ 15 the 45 g. Orders over NZ$ 85 ship free within New Zealand.