T.E.A. The Eternal Art

T.E.A. The Eternal Art keeps its counter at 4966 Santa Monica Ave, inside an artisan gallery a block from the Ocean Beach shore. Its owners 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.

Because the counter sits inside a gallery, the handmade teaware is on the same floor as the leaf, and the house runs side-by-side tasting ceremonies as well as a monthly subscription. What it does not publish anywhere is opening hours: the site gives a phone number and an email, and posts notices when the owners are away sourcing. Write or call before making the trip, and ask what is open on the aged shelf that week.