Seattle, Wash. One day you might like something, another you might not. That's why keeping meticulous track of your tasting sessions is necessary to find the best teas. She holds frequent blind tastings with
her customers and employees, and keeps "tasting sheets" on the products to keep track of what they say. "We're tasting all the time. We're constantly
evaluating samples," Knottingham says. This way, she has an objective reference
for how well the tea did, so she doesn't have to remember anything. When tasting, it's important to judge
the tea against the best specimens of its own variety, she says: "We're evaluating against what the best of its kind can be." She tastes about 1,000 teas a year, which is a lot, but she turns a lot of product— about two tons each week—despite the tiny size of her shop. It seats about 45 people in a bare red brick building in the historic Queen Anne district just a few
miles from Pikes Place Market. Many of her customers are passersby in
the busy restaurant and shopping district around her, but most of her clients come from other parts of the city for what they believe is the best tea around. Her selection is tough to beat, with
more than 200 teas on her 6-foot- tall display wall. Though she's tasted thousands of teas since the shop opened 20 years ago, she still takes part in the tastings every day. "You think you've tasted enough tea?
You haven't," she says. THE SOUTH
The Glenwood Village
Tearoom Shreveport, La.
Michelle Picard can smell a good tea a mile away. She's the manager of Glenwood Village
Tearoom, a 25-year-old teahouse in the historic South Highlands neighborhood in Shreveport, La. The shop seats about 100 people in
its dining area, which is packed with Victorian furniture and knickknacks from the adjoining antique shop. The tearoom, which is surrounded by antique stores on both sides and across the street, attracts an older, mostly female clientele. She knows her customers' tastes, and
is able to tell which teas they'll like just by smelling them. "If I like it, I know my customers will like it," she says. The smell is a good indicator of how
the tea will taste, Picard says: "The way the whole leaf tea smells is how it will taste in the cup. If it smells like blueberry, it'll taste like blueberry." Taking a sniff is a fast way to weed
out the bad teas, too. "If it smells like grass, it's not going to taste very good," she says. SCR
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