What makes someone start a tea business? Especially in a day and age when we’ve seen a number of relatively big players elbow their way to the top of the heap, not to mention what seems like a never-ending stream of smaller merchants who have also tossed their hats into the ring?

For Marcus Stout, owner of Golden Moon Tea, the path to tea entrepreneurship started at a tender age when he traveled with his mother to Hong Kong. While it was something of a culture shock, although mostly in a good way, one of the things that stood out for him the most were the many and varied flavors of all of the unfamiliar foods he encountered there, as well as the tea. As he notes at the Golden Moon Web site, “I knew at that point I wanted to explore exotic foods and flavors.”

The next step for Stout was a stint in culinary school in New York City, but he recalls that, quite honestly, he found this field “boring.” Not so long after, on a trip to Paris, he wandered into a small café and found that many of the patrons there were drinking tea that wasn’t made from tea bags. This was something of a revelation, as was the café’s extensive selection of loose leaf teas.

From here it was a relatively short step to Golden Moon Tea, a purveyor that currently makes its home base in Virginia and which claims to “only use the largest tea leaves with our teas giving you a tea experience that is unparalleled in this country.” The company also goes out of its way to work directly with tea growers, especially those who provide rarer varieties. Or, as they put it, “while most companies only use ‘off the shelf’ teas from large tea farms, Golden Moon Tea prides itself in searching all tea farms, no matter how large or small.” They also require that every tea that they select goes through their unique 9 Step Selection Process, which you can read about here.

All of which has gained them a plug from none other than popular author and healing personality Deepak Chopra, who claims, at their Web site, that “Golden Moon Tea has some of the most exquisite teas I have ever tasted.”

See also:
Mooning Over Golden Moon Teas

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