Té Quiero Té opened in March 2011 on Av. 28 de Julio, half a block from Larco, in Miraflores. The idea was to sell tea the way wine is sold: by origin, in small amounts, with someone behind the counter to explain the difference. Today the shop is on the second floor of Pasaje Los Pinos 114, opposite Ripley and a few steps from Parque Kennedy, open Monday to Saturday from ten in the morning to eight at night. More than ten years on, the list has grown past eighty teas and herbal infusions.
Everything is sold in 50 g and 100 g packs, and the shelf is arranged by family. The black teas go from a Peruvian leaf grown in Cusco to Assam, Ceylon, Keemun, Darjeeling and a smoked Lapsang Souchong, with English Breakfast and Earl Grey in their own corner. The greens run from a Cusco green and a Japanese sencha to a Lung Ching and an Izu matcha; the oolongs include a Se Chung, a Formosa and a Ti Kuan Yin; and there are Pai Mu Tan and Silver Needle among the whites, a young pu-erh, a Cochin masala chai, rooibos and Peruvian herbs such as muña.
The other half of the shop is hardware: Yixing clay teapots in two sizes, a cast-iron teapot, glass teapots with infusers, Japanese chasen whisks and chashaku scoops for matcha, measuring spoons, filters and tins. The website sells all of it, with delivery in Lima for orders from S/50, at a charge, and shipping to the rest of Peru by Olva Courier. If you only buy one thing, make it a 50 g pack of the Cusco black tea and another of the Darjeeling, and taste the distance between them.