T.E.A. The Eternal Art.

T.E.A. The Eternal Art keeps its counter at 4966 Santa Monica Ave, a small teahouse by the ocean in Ocean Beach. Its owners, Cinthia and James, travel to the producing regions and buy from the cultivators directly, and the catalogue reads like a notebook from those trips: white, green, oolong, black, heicha, pu-erh and herbs, with many lots listed under the year they were made rather than under a grade or a blend name.

Everything is sold by the gram from 10 g up, so a single gongfu session of something rare costs about what a cup costs elsewhere. Genmaicha from Shizuoka is the floor of the list; the Dragon Well, the Mi Lan Xiang dan cong from the Phoenix Mountain in Guangdong and the 2016 White Peony from Fujian sit in the middle; the wild-harvested Jin Jun Mei from the Wuyi mountains and the 2004 Gold Sun ripe pu-erh mark the ceiling. The aged shelf runs from a 1991 ripe cake through raw cakes of 1995, 1999, 2002 and 2007, plus a 1999 Liu Bao heicha.

Handmade teaware from potters the owners visit shares the room with the leaf, and the house runs side-by-side tasting ceremonies and a monthly subscription. On weekends the teahouse takes walk-ins, Saturday and Sunday from noon to six, charged by the hour and first come, first served. At the time of writing, though, the shop is marked temporarily closed until November while the owners travel, with orders processed in November. Write or call before making the trip.