At Tea Habitat, tea connoisseurship is taken to the extreme

"Here, taste this," says Imen Shan, proprietor of Tea Habitat. "This" is a cup of cattelya orchid fragrance oolong, in its fourth brewing. It tastes lush and overwhelmingly organic -- the sort of humid, heavy florality that hits your face when you walk into a greenhouse full of blooming orchids. "This is from a 400-year-old tree," she says, "so the trees are full of all the minerals from the soil, and all those substances make it into the tea."

By C. Thi Nguyen

August 19, 2009