Coffee and Tea Exchange Edit

Coffee & Tea Exchange is more of a coffee shop that has a nice amount of tea. While the selection of serious tea is not terribly large, there are a few that are not easily found elsewhere. I do not think that they cycle through their inventory very often, so be careful when purchasing anything expensive and make sure it smells of fresh tea as I made the mistake of buying a few ounces of dead and expensive silver needle white tea (lesson learned). The organization and storage of the tea is not what I would call inviting, but it seems to work for what they do. Honestly, if they had a smaller inventory of tea it would be a much more ideal place.
As for the shop, it is very difficult to get a good smell of the dry teas because the room smells very strong of coffee and those awful coffee flavoring syrups… so if there is any subtle nuance it will be muffled by the sickening smell of sticky hazelnut. The other items in the store are nice and I enjoyed looking around at what they had on display and even purchased a nice decorative tin. The staff is very friendly and, while not incredibly knowledgeable, they are at least willing to try and will admit when they do not know rather than make something up. This is not a destination tea shop by any means, but it is a fine place to grab something new if you are in the area or just stop in to look and grab a coffee.

Tea selection is not that good. Teaware selection is quite interesting although many of them are quite dusty already. I bought a good glass tea infuser and use it to this day. Back to the tea — bad! I got darjeeling (tasted like chemicals), and matcha. The matcha is clearly of low grade. Now I understand that when it comes to matcha, you get what you pay for.

An alright selection, but I’m not really in love with their Tea varieties or offerings