Not all tea is created equal. There are the more obvious villains herded together in tea-bags, generally recognized as tea dust by the more savvy pupil of this ancient beverage.
In order to extract the good from the best, one needs to be aware of the processes involved in the creation of tea. It is not necessary to become an expert of all stages involved, but a few simple basics will be enough to see the tea in the forest of offerings.

Tea is grown on tea bushes all over the world. It loves warmer, soggier climates, but there are exceptions even to that rule. The most famed tea originates from the region of Assam - an exclusive source of tea for some discriminating companies like Samboya.

Basically, for expert quality tea leaves there are two main sources to watch for:

Award winning harvests in Assam have established it as the largest tea exporter in the world, in great contrast to the tiny region of Darjeeling, which instead prides itself in producing the rarest and the most sought after teas in the world.

Because of these teas popularities however, it becomes necessary to watch for certifications. The Tea Board of India certifies exports of their teas in order to offer some quality control over the masses of ‘faux’ Darjeeling - or even Assamese teas which flood the global market. Teas from these regions are generally more expensive and most everyone in the tea trade will find a way to take advantage of the less informed.

Once you have managed the hurdle of recognizing certifications, the next step is realizing which tea leaves are the most prized infusion brews. At this point it is very helpful to know some basics about tea processing itself:

The tea leaves are carefully chosen off each bush, picked and then air dried on great fields prepared just for that purpose. Once they have been dried, they are put in ovens for further oxidation, or finished in other ways held secret by some private plantation owners. The finishing process will determine the final taste of your tea, and many procedures have taken years to create and are therefore not publicized by their originators.

So finally the leaves are separated according to their sizes, so that each batch may include similar leaves for a smoother infusion. The larger the tea leaf, the longer the brewing process of your final tea. In contrast, the smaller the tea leaf, the shorter the infusion process. For that reason, tea-bags with tea dust have become very popular. It brews the quickest and is the easiest to store. However, you sacrifice taste and quality using tea dust.

Another - even more important - issue with tea dust is its expiration date: generally, the larger the tea leaf surface, the longer it will remain useable. Tea leaves will only last for up to one year. The smaller the leaf surface, the shorter its lifespan. By that calculation, tea dust has a very limited lifespan. Yet, the tea sold in tea bags in conventional stores is more than four years old by the time it arrives on the shelves.

Stale tea is easily detected once you drink it: the bitter aftertaste of carton box flavors is not characteristic to any normal tea infusion. Commercial tea is that old because once it was harvested, it was transported to be auctioned off, then transported to different countries to once again be sold to various companies who then shipped it yet again to some warehouses, repackage it and then finally sold it to stores in its carton box presentation at the ripe old age of four or five years. This tea can be safely pronounced as clinically dead.