Tī Ani

Tī Ani is a Christchurch house that blends in two directions at once. One half of the range is wild-harvested New Zealand leaf — kawakawa, kūmarahou, mountain horopito, tātarāmoa and mānuka, each picked rather than farmed and each sold in a small 20 g cube. The other half is ordinary in the best sense: an Assam, a Japanese sencha, a genmaicha, a Silver Needle white, rooibos, hibiscus and rose petal, all organic and all sold in the same case.

You find it at the Riverside Pantry, inside the Riverside Market on Oxford Terrace — the covered market hall in the centre of the city, open from nine every day and until six. That is a different proposition from a shop of its own: you can look at the whole range in one case, compare the cubes side by side, and buy a 20 g wild-harvested tea and a 50 g Assam in the same minute without an appointment or a delivery wait.

The format is the thing to understand before you buy. Almost everything comes as a cube and a pouch: a 50 g cube of the house blends at one price and a 200 g pouch of the same tea behind it, or a 20 g and a 30 g cube for the scarcer leaf with a 100 g pouch. The cube is the tasting size and the pouch is the restock, so the sensible first visit is three or four cubes rather than one pouch. Cast-iron teapots and cups sit on the same counter.