Tour de Tea

Tour de Tea is Shop B at 88 Merthyr Road, in New Farm. The business belongs to two sisters, Amy and Hannah, and it started well before the shop did: by its own account it has been part of the Brisbane tea scene since 2009, first pouring cups at local farmers' markets, and the store opened in 2018. Part of the fit-out is recycled, with fixtures and counters built from repurposed Queenslander windows and doors, the tasting cups are reusable, and spent leaves go back into compost.

The shop lists more than sixty teas, all hand-packed in its New Farm studio, and the sisters release only one or two signature blends a year. Each blend carries a short piece of fiction they write themselves. The single origins read like a map: a Ceylon English Breakfast, a single-estate Assam, a Keemun from Qimen County in Anhui, a Ti Kuan Yin from Anxi, a Jin Xuan milky oolong from Taiwan, an organic Pai Mu Tan from Fujian, an organic sencha, a genmaicha and a Japanese ceremonial matcha.

Formats are counted in cups as well as grams. The everyday teas come in a tea box marked 35 serves, between 70 and 80 g depending on the leaf, with a 300 g refill for many of them; the oolongs come in 50 g, the Pai Mu Tan in 40 g, and the matcha in 50 g pouches, singly or in pairs. Rooibos, organic chamomile and a medium-spice chai round out the shelf. The shop opens Tuesday to Sunday, closes on Mondays and public holidays, and ships from its online store.