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A 5-gram sample is a taste — two to four pots, depending on your pot. It is not a daily supply, and it is not a discount. If you brew it well it will tell you whether to keep walking down this road. If you don't, that's a fair answer too.

We send one box per person per quarter, four single-bush teas, picked by farmers we have names for. You cover shipping; we cover the tea. Most newcomers stop after one box. We're fine with that.

There is more wisdom in a kettle that has been used a hundred times than in a kettle that has been bought once.

How the math works

Each curated box has about $11 of tea in it. We send 240 boxes a quarter — roughly $2,640 quarterly in leaf. That's funded out of the marketing budget of our parent storefronts (shop.thetea.app and shop.puerh.app). We measure success by how many people come back to brew the same tea by the gram, not by samples claimed.

The honor system

We rely on the honor system for the one-per-quarter rule. We don't run device fingerprinting, we don't ask for ID. If you order three boxes to three addresses, you're cheating yourself out of trying three different seasons, but you're not breaking any system that costs us money to police. We'd rather make the rule clear and trust people than build infrastructure to enforce it.

A note to people who already drink tea

If you already buy tea from us — thank you. Please don't claim a gratis box; let it go to someone newer. The samples are not better than the by-gram product you can already order, just smaller. Use pick three if you want to try something specific.