New SALE!!!!!!!!!!!

On Sale until October 12th- http://www.butikiteas.com/On%20Sale.html
Grapefruit Dragon-38% off ($4.00 an ounce)
2003 Reserve Four Season Oolong-32% off ($4.25 an ounce)
Anxi Tie Guan Yin-24% off ($4.75 for half an ounce)
Premium Chai-17% off ($6.00 for 2 ounces)
Good Morning Sunshine-16% off ($3.75 an ounce)

Price Reduction
Our Wild Purple Buds Puerh have been reduced in price by 42%.
We have also added a 2012 harvest, so you may choose a 2012 or 2011 harvest. Check it out: http://www.butikiteas.com/Puerh.html

What’s New
Luxury Sampler-Check it out http://www.butikiteas.com/LuxurySampler.html
This includes our Anxi Tie Guan Yin, our Organic Huangshan Mao Feng, and our Mi Xian Black in tins housed in a burgundy organza bag.

We will be running 2 new contests!!! One for flavored tea (this is an interesting contest for us) drinkers and one for plain tea drinkers. We should have something posted within the day.

We are also currently working on a number of new teas and will have some new teas from the Glenburn Estate up shortly as well as a wonderful premium Bi Lo Chun.

The Sad, The Glad, What's Next

The Sad
I'm sad to say that our entire stock of Organic Spring Twist has been sold.  This was one of my personal favorite green teas but hopefully we will be restocking it next spring/summer. For those of you that enjoyed this wonderful tea, I would like to recommend our Organic Huangshan Mao Feng, which has sweet pea, artichoke, white corn, and fresh cut grass notes as well as some light Brazil nut notes.  Our Organic Huangshan Mao Feng is currently on sale for $4.00 a half ounce.


The Glad
Recently, we have added 2 new teas and a new sampler to our site.  Here is a little more info about those items:

Maple Pecan Oolong
Our Maple Pecan Oolong utilizes our Nilgiri Frost Oolong base. This smooth, silky tea has maple notes that develop into pecan notes then finish with maple notes that linger. Some citrus notes may also be detected. The flavors weave together brilliantly and are well balanced with the oolong base. With a little sugar the maple and pecan intensify for a wonderful desert treat that resembles a pecan pie. We recommend adding sugar slowly; too much sugar and the tea will taste like exactly like fresh maple syrup with a hint of pecan. Check it out: Oolong Teas

Grapefruit Dragon
Our Grapefruit Dragon has an Organic Dragon Well base that originates from Anhui, China. At the beginning of the sip, the grapefruit is almost immediately noticed then the mellow sweet marine notes of the green tea appear. Towards the end of the sip, more intense natural grapefruit notes produce a slight tartness that tingles the tongue. The grapefruit flavor most resembles pink grapefruit or perhaps a gentle white grapefruit. With a little brown crystal sugar the grapefruit flavor is much sweeter and juicier with only minimal tartness and somewhat resembles a Grapefruit Brulee but sweeter.  Check it out: Green Teas

Autumn Comfort Sampler
all is one of our favorite seasons. As the weather cools, we look forward to fuzzy blankets, leaves changing colors, rich foods, decadent desserts, and joyful holidays. Our Autumn Comfort brings together some of the wonderful flavors of the season. This sampler offers 1oz each of the following teas/tisane: Maple Pecan Oolong, Cider Guayusa, Pumpkin Creme Brulee (black tea), and Almond Indulgence (black tea). Purchased individually, these teas would cost $19.00 but together we are offering them for only $14.75. That's 22% off their individual prices  Check it out: Samplers





What's Next
Quite a bit is going on here at Butiki Teas.  Right now we are waiting on one ingredient to arrive before our Pistachio Ice Cream tea is back in stock.  Hopefully, it will arrive in a week so we can immediately start blending a new batch.  Additionally, we are in the final stages of preparing the Luxury Sampler.  This sampler will include our Mi Xian Black, Organic Huangshan Mao Feng, and our Anxi Tie Guan Yin.  The teas will be housed in individual tins and will come in a burgandy organza bag.  In the next month or so we will be adding some new tea ware to our site.  We will also be adding a few Glenburn Estate teas within the next few months and a new premium Bi Lo Chun will be added shortly.  Lastly, we have several new flavored teas in the works.  Our current project is a marshmallow tea.  Right now we are leaning towards a Marshmallow Darjeeling but would love to hear suggestions.  We are hoping to have a marshmallow tea ready by the end of October.

-Stacy Lim      

Office Closed for Long Weekend

IMPORTANT: Our office is closed Friday, September 7^th through Monday, September 10^th.  Any purchases made Friday through Monday will be shipped out on Tuesday, September 11th.  We apologize for the inconvenience.  During this time we will be offering 3 free samples of your choice (Organic Daba Mountain Jade is the only tea not eligible for sample).  Please let us know which samples you would like to try when you check out by listing them in the “Instructions to Merchant” section or by sending us an email.  Thank you for your patience.  –Stacy Lim   

Behind The Name: Watermelon Xylophone Edition

Before Watermelon Xylophone (white tea) was even ready to be put on our website, we had been getting a lot of questions about the name of the tea.  So the dilemma remained do I tell customers about the origin of the name or let it remain a mystery to add to the mystique of this tea.  I’ve decided to discuss the origin of the name because it is still a kind of mystery to me anyways.   

After creating the initial blend, I was having great difficulty coming up with a name.  The tea tasted just like watermelon to me.  Watermelon Tea is really not that enticing of a name.  On a 2 hour car ride with my husband, Joel, to pretty much the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania we spent about an hour doing a brainstorming session, throwing out what seemed like hundreds on names.  We went through names such as: Soothing Watermelon, Sensual Watermelon, Juicy Watermelon, Watermelon Candy, Enticing Watermelon, Summer Watermelon etc etc etc but nothing hit us as amazing.  Then out of nowhere I just blurted out Watermelon Xylophone.  My logic at that time was that something that has nothing to do with watermelon sounded better than the names we were coming up with.  But then we both actually started to like how that sounded.  Kind of catchy I thought and hey maybe it’s not so unrelated.   

Watermelon Xylophone is music for your mouth and its light and fun just like xylophone music.  So, you might be asking why was xylophone randomly in your brain?  Who thinks about xylophones enough to blurt it out randomly?  Well, I suppose I have been in a xylophone mood recently but why I got into a xylophone mood in the first place is beyond me.  Anyways, I had really been inspired by xylophone music at the time.  Above is one of my favorite xylophone related videos on youtube.  It kind of represents Watermelon Xylophone.  I mean who could not be in a good mood listening to Super Mario Brothers 2 theme song done in ragtime?  Watch that one all the way through, the end is awesome. 

I wish we had a better reason to call this charming tea Watermelon Xylophone, but unfortunately the truth isn't always so poetic.  A fellow Steepster poster, TheTeaFairy, had guessed "...the needles do remind me of the long keys of a xylophone.  And just like a xylophone, the taste escalates and explodes in a beautiful ascent!".  What a beautiful interpretation.  I love it!

For more information on our brand new tea, Watermelon Xylophone, check it out here:  Watermelon Xylophone

-Stacy

Behind The Name: The Killer's Vanilla Edition

Why did we name a mint, lavender, vanilla, guayusa blend The Killer’s Vanilla?  Well, that's a good question.  For months we were working on a vanilla guayusa with no success.  We made some good vanilla guayusas but nothing that hit us as unique or amazing.  

For some inspiration we turned to iTunes to help us out and looked for every song with the word vanilla in it.  It was The Killer’s Vanilla that truly inspired us.  After listening to that song for what must have been hours on end we knew we had to create something smooth, subtle, relaxed yet there needs to be something deceptive about the blend.  The song itself is very relaxed, loose, comforting, warm, spacey and dark with moments of fast, hard chaos.  A bit of a juxtaposition and that is what our guayusa needed to be.  Since we had already chosen the vanilla, which to us is relaxing we wanted to continue that theme with some relaxing lavender and subtle spearmint.  Now we have a relaxing blend but at the same time the high caffeine content of the guayusa creates a sense of alertness.  Sleepy, more like relaxed, yet wide awake.  We loved it.  Another interesting contrast is tasting this tea with and without sugar.  Without sugar it tastes like an earthy herbal blend but with sugar it tastes like a creamy dessert treat.    

Above is a video clip of The Killer’s Vanilla (don't worry its advertisement-free).  Thank you The Killer's Vanilla for providing great inspiration to us.  Here is a link to one of our favorite artists, Amon Tobin:    http://www.amontobin.com.

For more information about The Killer's Vanilla guayusa, check out our website:    Butiki Teas Guayusa Selection 

-Stacy

Our Cantaloupe & Cream Took 3rd @ North American Tea Championship

We are very excited to announce that our Cantaloupe & Cream won 3rd place in the Flavored White Tea category of the 2012 Spring Hot Tea Class of the North American Tea Championship!!!!  This was the only tea that we had entered into NATC.   

As someone that is very critical of my own work, I never expected that a tea I would create would win any awards.  Love and care is put into every single tea that we make (as well as quality ingredients) and we are very proud that we won 3rd place.  We would have never entered this tea had we not seen the reviews at Steepster.  While we get frequent purchases and praise of our Cantaloupe & Cream, it still hadn't hit us that this tea was extra special until we had read some of the reviews at Steepster.  Big thanks to everyone that has supported us, reviewed our teas, and of course our awesome customers!

You can find more info about Cantaloupe & Cream here:  http://www.butikiteas.com/White.html

-Stacy Lim

Office Closed For Long Weekend

IMPORTANT: Our office is closed Friday, August 3rd through Monday, August 6th.  Any purchases made Friday through Monday will be shipped out on Tuesday the 7th.  We apologize for the inconvenience.  During this time we will be offering 3 free samples of your choice (Organic Daba Mountain Jade is the only tea not eligible for sample).  Please let us know which samples you would like to try when you check out by listing them in the “Instructions to Merchant” section or by sending us an email.  Thank you for your patience.  –Stacy Lim