REDDRAGON Tea.

REDDRAGON Tea sells Chinese tea from two shops in Tashkent: one on Mukhammad Yusuf Street 61, in the Mirzo-Ulugbek district near Buyuk Ipak Yuli metro station, and one on Bunyodkor Avenue 4, in the Shaykhantakhur district by the U-Tower residential complex. Both open from 10:00 to 23:00, seven days a week, and both are set up so you can look at the leaf, ask the staff questions and collect an online order. A third counter lives inside Telegram, where an order takes a couple of taps, and the shop delivers across Uzbekistan.

The catalogue is organised by origin. Yunnan supplies shu and sheng pu-erh and Dian Hong; the Wuyi Mountains, Da Hong Pao, Tie Luo Han and Shui Xian; Anxi and Fuding, Tieguanyin and white teas; Fenghuang in Guangdong, the Mi Lan Xiang and Ya Shi Xiang dancongs; Taiwan, GABA, Alishan, Dong Ding and ginseng oolong; Zhejiang and Anhui, Longjing, Huangshan Maofeng and Taiping Houkui. Every tea is listed with its grade and type, and most are sold in 50, 100 and 250 g packs, with the price shown per 100 g.

Pu-erh is the deepest shelf, more than thirty of them, from a Gong Ting palace-grade shu and a sheng from Xiaohuzhai village in Yiwu to cakes and bricks labelled with harvest years back to 1985, beside a few Chinese matchas and teaware for gongfu brewing. The shop says it tastes every batch before it goes on sale and does not stock tea without a known factory and harvest year. Its own brewing advice is a good starting point: 6 g of leaf to 120 ml of water and short infusions of about eight seconds.