High Climate Tea Company

High Climate Tea Company is a Chinese loose-leaf tea shop and tea bar at 12 S Lexington Avenue in downtown Asheville, and it is a specialist operation rather than a café with a tea list. The owner's route into it explains the depth: formerly an English teacher, their life changed when they began training under Uncle Gee and Ming Duong at Vital Tea Leaf in San Francisco's Chinatown, and they now travel to China every year with them to source directly. The retail side runs to more than two hundred distinct teas and wares, priced from a few dollars up to $579 for an aged puerh cake — a 2013 Lao Man'e — with a 2008 Lao Ban Zhang at $459 and a Phoenix cake at $85. That is a serious cellar for a shop this size, and it is the sort of range you normally have to buy online and hope.

The part that matters for a non-drinker is that you can sit and drink here rather than only buy. The shop runs a tea bar offering Gung Fu Cha — thirty-minute guided tastings at the counter, brewed in the traditional Chinese style of many short infusions from a small pot, which is a genuinely different experience from a mug of tea and closer in attention to a tasting flight. The service list is priced simply: Bai Mu Dan white tea at $8, described as producing a buttery-textured liquid with the fragrance of a fresh-baked fruit danish; Silver Needle at $8, from young Anhui buds with an aroma of white peach; a Jasmine Silver Needle at $10; a Jasmine Pearl at $8; Dragonwell at $8; and a Jade Spring green tea from Jiangsu at $6 to $10 across three grades. Nothing here is alcoholic and nothing is infused with anything else. Two caveats: the shop opens 12pm to 6pm Thursday through Monday only, and its food service has at points been suspended, so confirm before travelling for anything beyond tea.