Tea This Week — October 5, 2026
Deals
Checked this week (all seen on 2026-10-05, directly on each shop’s own site).
The Spring 2026 harvest has reached American shelves, and it changes what the discounts mean. Yunnan Sourcing’s sale page looked static for a month; this week the 2026 crop arrived and sits in the same collection at full price, right beside the 2025 lots that are marked down. The sale was never a sale on these teas — it is a sale on last year’s version of them. Seven Cups made the same turn, rotating its New 2026 page from white teas to Yunnan blacks. And Tea Drunk posted its first markdown in weeks, which sold out before we could tell you about it.
Yunnan Sourcing US — now clearly a last-season clearance
The On Sale Now page has grown from eleven items to sixteen, but only nine of them are actually discounted. The rest are Spring 2026 arrivals listed at full price. Read the vintage, not the collection name.
Genuinely marked down, all of them older harvests:
| Tea | Vintage | Size | Was | Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Imperial Grade Jin Jun Mei, Tong Mu Guan | Spring 2025 | 50 g | $14.75 | $11.00 |
| Wu Yi “Golden Peony Varietal” | Spring 2025 | 50 g | $14.00 | $12.00 |
| Purple Needle Black Tea, Jing Mai | Spring 2025 | 100 g | $13.00 | $11.00 |
| Yi Wu Wild Arbor Assamica | Spring 2025 | 50 g | $11.75 | $10.00 |
| Feng Qing “Golden Pekoe #100” | Spring 2025 | 50 g | $11.50 | $9.50 |
| Tong Mu “Hua Xiang” Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong | Spring 2025 | 25 g | $9.75 | $8.25 |
| Imperial Yixing Hong | Spring 2023 | 25 g | $7.50 | $5.00 |
| Robust Yunnan Black Tea Sampler | Spring 2025 | — | $52.00 | $42.00 |
| Lincang Dian Hong Sampler | Spring 2022 | — | $44.00 | $36.00 |
Sitting in the same collection at full price, because their 2026 version has just landed: Imperial Grade Laoshan Black (50 g, $11.00), Imperial Gold Needle (50 g, $10.50), Jingmai Mountain Wild Arbor (100 g, $11.00), Wu Yi “Huang Guan Yin” (50 g, $10.50), the Purple Black Tea Sampler ($43.50), the Further Steps Tea Sampler ($54.00), and — the one break from black tea in an otherwise all-红茶 collection — the Yunnan “Spring Tribute” Green Tea Sampler ($43.00).
Two changes worth noting against last week. The Feng Qing “Classic 58” Dian Hong, discounted for four straight weeks, has dropped out of the collection entirely. And the Purple Tea Sampler that sold out in September is back as the Purple Black Tea Sampler — in a Spring 2026 pressing, at full price.
Is last year’s black tea worth buying? Usually yes, and more so than for green tea. Chinese black tea (红茶) is fully oxidized and does not depend on the fresh, grassy top notes that make a year-old Longjing a disappointment. A Spring 2025 Jin Jun Mei stored sealed and cool has lost very little; the Spring 2023 Yixing Hong at $5 for 25 g is a cheap way to taste a regional style you probably haven’t tried. If you want the freshest expression of a tea you already love, pay full price for the 2026. If you are exploring, the 2025 shelf is the better value this week.
The standing offers still stack: free gifts and BOGO in five tiers starting at $45, and free US shipping on $75+ . Same fine print as always — the BOGO item must be added to the cart manually for the code to work, and the $75 shipping threshold is measured after any discount code is applied.
Tea Drunk — a markdown, and it is already gone
After weeks of no discounts at all across its 105 listings, Tea Drunk marked down its Spring 2019 Da Hong Pao (Great Red Robe) 大紅袍 — $68.00 → $55.00 for the 32 g box, $29.00 → $23.00 for the 8 g packet, across both the Spring 2019 and Spring 2019 II lots.
The reason given on the page is refreshingly blunt: “The items are discounted because the labels are discolored.” That is the best kind of discount — nothing wrong with the tea. Unfortunately all four variants show sold out as of this morning, so this is a watch-list item rather than a buy. Tea Drunk’s Wuyi yancha rarely goes on sale at any price, so if a cosmetic-defect markdown reappears, it is worth moving on.
Seven Cups — the 2026 Yunnan blacks are in
Last week this page was all white tea. This week New 2026 Teas leads with four black teas, all 2026 harvest:
| Tea | Origin | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Zhongguo Hong (China Red) | Black tea | $39.00 |
| Youle Sun-Dried | Yunnan | $23.00 |
| Hei Meiren (Black Beauty) | Yiwushan, Mengla County, Xishuangbanna; Yunnan Dayezhong heirloom cultivar | $20.00 / 50 g |
| Naka Sun-Dried | Naka Village, Mengsong Township, Menghai County, Xishuangbanna | $18.50–$36.00 (50 g / 100 g) |
No discount on any of them, but the two sun-dried Yunnan blacks are the interesting pair. Both Naka and Youle are village names better known to pu-erh drinkers than to black-tea drinkers — the same famous gardens, processed as 红茶 instead of being pressed into cakes. Buying both and tasting them side by side is a terroir comparison with the processing variable held constant, which is an unusually clean experiment for $41.50.
Everyone else
- Red Blossom — zero discounted items across all 154 products. Standing banner unchanged: “Free shipping on US orders $100+.”*
- White2Tea — zero discounted items across all 1,121 products, a fifth straight quiet week.
- Old Ways Tea — the front page repeats the same line for a fifth week: “2026 harvest is complete — black teas should arrive soon and oolong teas later in the year.” Given that Yunnan Sourcing and Seven Cups both landed their 2026 blacks this week, Old Ways’ Wuyi blacks are plausibly close.
- TeaVivre and Verdant Tea blocked automated access again (HTTP 403, fifth consecutive week). Both are alive in a normal browser; if either is on your list, check by hand.
Events
All NYC metro, with one free online option. Nothing new was posted this week — the October calendar set a fortnight ago is holding, and every event below was re-verified as still open for registration this morning.
This week
Nothing in the metro area this week. The next event is Saturday the 10th.
Booking now
- Chocolate & Tea Pairing — Saturday, October 10, 1:00–3:00 PM, NYTS Tea Studio, 38 W 32nd St #1010, Manhattan. $55 members / $75 virtual tea club members / $90 non-members. A four-course gongfu tea and artisanal chocolate pairing. Still open.
- Community Engagement Tea — Saturday, October 10, 1:00–3:00 PM, Harlem Rose Garden, 6 East 129th Street, Manhattan. Free.
- NYTS Tea Book Club: The Book of Tea — Saturday, October 17, 1:00–3:00 PM, NYTS Tea Studio. $35 in person, free to attend virtually. Okakura’s classic, tasted alongside three historical preparation methods: boiled, whipped, and steeped. This remains the one genuinely online-attendable Chinese-tea event we can find, and it costs nothing — if you are reading this from outside New York, this is your event.
- Community Engagement Tea — Saturday, October 17: 12:00–2:00 PM at East New York Farms, 620 Schenck Avenue, Brooklyn; and 1:00–2:00 PM at Maggie’s Magic Garden, 1574 Lexington Avenue, Manhattan. Both free.
- Community Engagement Tea — Saturday, October 24, 2:00–3:00 PM, Maple Street Community Garden, 237 Maple Street, Brooklyn. Free.
- Autumn Fundraising Party — Saturday, October 24, 7:00–9:30 PM, Park Slope, Brooklyn. Price still not posted.
- 2022 Wuliang: Gushu Pu’er Comparison Tasting — Sunday, October 25, 1:00–4:00 PM, NYTS Tea Studio. $25 members, $60 non-members. Side-by-side tasting of different leaf material from the same Wuliang mountain area — the kind of controlled comparison that is hard to assemble at home. Still open.
- Chinese Tea Ceremony Workshop: Brewing Fenghuang Dancong with Gaiwan — Sunday, November 8, 11:00 AM–1:00 PM, Teasthetic, 89 5th Avenue Suite 701, Manhattan. Price not listed on the organizer’s page.
- Meditation with Tea: A Chinese Tea Ceremony for Stillness — Sunday, December 20, 11:00 AM–12:30 PM, Teasthetic, 89 5th Avenue Suite 701, Manhattan. Price not listed on the organizer’s page.
Deals and event details verified on 2026-10-05 from each linked source. Prices and availability change without notice — always confirm on the shop’s or organizer’s own page.