The World’s Most Expensive Teas

A cup of Earl Grey’s breakfast tea may be one of the preferred beverages in the United Kingdom, but the world’s most expensive teas offer a much more exquisite flavour profile. While tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, with approximately three billion cups per day, the difference between the massively produced product and the refined variations is enormous. Not only does their cultivating and processing method vary, so does the flavour intensity. The addition of herbs and blending of different tea extracts can modify your drinking experience, as well as the price tag.

6. Gyokuro Tea

Price: $650 per kilogram

Gyokuro, which means “jewel dew”, is a shaded, pale green tea, with an intense aroma and specific processing method. Often classified as the unshaded Chinese tea Sencha, these leaves are shaded from the sun for two weeks prior to harvesting them, in order to increase the amino-acid levels in the final product, giving it a distinctive taste.

5. Poo Poo Pu-Erh Tea

Price: $1,000 per kilogram

Yes, the name is as revealing as you would think, since this fermented tea is infused with the feces of several insects. Given that the only thing they eat is tea leaves, their droppings add to the concentrated flavour of this energizing concoction. Originating from the 18th century, when Chinese doctors in the Yunnan region found the Pu-Erh to have medicinal properties and thereby offered it as a gift to Emperor Qianlong, this tea has stood the test of time. Today, its meticulous preparation method makes it one of the most expensive on the market.

4. Yellow Gold Tea Buds

Price: $3,000 per kilogram

Maybe one of the trickiest teas to get your hands on, but definitely one that’s worth the effort, Yellow Gold Tea Buds is produced by the TWG Tea Company and only sold in Singapore. What makes it so special is its limited production: one day per year, tea pickers hike up to one specific area on a specific mountain and cut the superior part of the tea tree with golden scissors, in an almost ceremonial way. After being sundried, the buds are stored in containers in order to release the polyphenols that give them their yellow colour and particular flowery aroma. In honour of the name, the leaves are then painted in 24 carat gold.

3. Panda Dung Tea

Price: $70,000 per kilogram

Once again, one of the world’s most expensive teas features animal droppings. In this case, however, the panda excrement isn’t in the tea leaves itself, but used as fertilizer for the tea trees instead. Since panda’s only eat bamboo, relieving 70% of the nutrients through their feces, this gives the tea a highly defined flavour, one that tea lovers are willing to pay a fortune for.

2. PG Tips Diamond Tea Bag

Price: $15,000 per tea bag

While these limited edition tea bags are filled with the most expensive Darjeeling tea in the world – Silver Tips Imperial Tea from the Makibari Estate – its real value is in the packaging. In honour of the British tea company PG Tips’ 75th anniversary (in 2005), they created the diamond studded tea bag, featuring 280 diamonds, and handcrafted by Boodles jewellery. Talk about a luxury beverage!

1. Da-Hong Pao Tea

Price: $1.2 million per kilo

A valued Chinese national treasure, this legendary tea is a well-kept secret and only given as a gift to dignitaries and honourable visitors. It’s said that a Ming Dynasty emperor was cured by this tea, and so his men went in search of the source, finding only four bushes on top of Mount Wuyi. Although Da-Hong Pao tea is very difficult to find for sale, its whopping price of $1.2 million for a kilogram makes it the emperor of the world’s most expensive teas.