Hello, fellow tea drinkers, and thanks for visiting the Shan Valley Tea blog! As the new year kicks off, we’re also kicking off this blog again. It’s been a while since our last update. We’ve been quite busy with expanding our business and we’re excited to share with you the growth that’s been happening. Here’s what’s been going on.
First of all, we want to take a moment to thank the people who have taken the time to review our teas on social media. While we have a lot of local customers in our New Jersey shop, we hope to share our Burmese teas with everyone in North America and beyond. The best way we can do that is through the reviews our customers share. If you’ve enjoyed our teas in the past, we would like to ask that you share your love with other people by word of mouth, social media, or any other way that lets people know how much you appreciate our Burmese tea.
Also, if you are browsing our site and haven’t joined our social media pages, you can find the links to Facebook, Twitter, and G+ down at the bottom of our website. You can share brewing tips and food pairing suggestions for our teas, or anything else you like. And if you have any questions about our teas, we’ll be glad to answer them for you.
Amazon!
Another big thing that happened since our last post is that we opened up an Amazon storefront. If you prefer to order your goods through Amazon, you can get all of our products through them. We’d also like it if you left us reviews of our teas on those pages so more people can understand just how good it is to drink Shan Valley Tea.
A Special Thank You
We want to give special thanks to a YouTube reviewer, Robert Veach, who gave video reviews of two of our products. You can watch the reviews at these links:
If you haven’t seen these yet, check them out! And Robert, if you’re reading this, thank you very much for the review of our fine Burmese teas. We would like to make one small recommendation for your steeping process. Green teas should be brewed for 3-5 minutes. Seven minutes is too long! You must like your tea strong. :)
Green Tea for Weight Loss
Our green tea was also reviewed on the blog Fit Bottomed Eats last year. We appreciate the notice and hope that our green tea has helped you in your weight loss goals! If weight loss is a goal for you, you might want to read this post we made about how green tea can help you shed pounds.
Website and Product Updates
And since it has been a while since our last update, here are some of the changes you might have noticed on our website:
* We have several new products available, including new kinds of Burmese tea and canisters with single-serve tea bags. There are now five varieties of green tea and three varieties of black tea. You can order sampler packs of both to see what kinds you like before you splurge on a box of tins. Consider giving a tin to your loved ones the next time the holidays come around.
* We now offer free shipping on US orders of $50 or more! If you really really like our teas, this is a great way to buy a few month’s supply at a more reasonable rate. And if you’re a restaurant that wants to serve our teas, give us a call and we might be able to arrange a bulk rate!
* Our operations are continuing to expand. Check out all this tea we received from our growers last year in this Facebook post! As one of the first importers of Burmese tea to the US, we’re getting a lot of buzz from the growers who are eager to break into the markets here.
* We helped with a charity event for the American Burma Buddhist Association. Myanmar is a devoutly Theravada Buddhist country. Helping out with charity events like these helps to connect Shan Valley Tea to the local Burmese community and enables us to give gifts to members of the Sangha (the Buddhist monastic community). We hope for more opportunities in the future!
Whole Planet Foundation
We’re continuing to bring the wonder and flavor of Burmese teas to New Jersey locals. In addition to our storefront, we have also been blessed to have our teas picked up by several local Whole Foods stores. If you’re a New Jersey local, you might be lucky enough to live near one that carries it!
By doing this, we’re also helping our tea growers gain access to microcredit through the Whole Planet Foundation. This is a division of Whole Foods that extends microloans to poor farmers in areas where Whole Foods sources their products. By carrying Shan Valley teas in their stores through us, farmers don’t just get paid from our sales, but can also take advantage of low-interest microloans in their local region funded by Whole Foods. It’s an incredible opportunity for our growers to expand operations and improve their techniques.
Future Posts
We’re hoping to keep this blog more updated in the future, so be on the lookout for more stories about the benefits of tea and about the beautiful country of Burma (Myanmar), the source for all of our products. We’ll let you know when a new post goes up through our social media channels so you won’t miss a single one.
Once again, we want to thank you for reading this post and for being a supporter of Shan Valley. Burmese tea is still quite rare to find in the United States. Shan Valley is one of the first and foremost importers of this tea. We go directly to the growers to find the best products to bring back to share with you. The reviews of the teas made by people on this site are proof of how good they are. We firmly believe that Burmese tea is among the best tea ever grown, and the Shan Valley in Myanmar is the source for the best teas there.
If you have yet to try any of our teas and don’t know where to begin, we recommend starting with our first flush black or green teas. First flush teas are the earliest teas of the growing season and full of flavor! One sip and you’ll never want to go back to boring orange pekoe again.
