John S.
Yelp
I have been a medium-grade tea snob for the past 15 years. I discovered Bellocq online maybe 8 or 9 years ago, and it has been one of my top 4 tea merchants ever since. I had been buying tea from them for a while when I stumbled on the fact that the store was only a few blocks from my daughter's then-apartment in Greenpoint, so I have visited the store a few time, too. I really love Bellocq's taste in teas -- theirs are the only blended or flavored teas I ever buy, and their one-time limited offerings are often sensational. I have never had a problem with customer service there, and visiting the store in person has been a wonderful, warm experience.
I also want to take issue with the suggestion in some of the reviews that Bellocq is super expensive. In my experience, on a price/value basis, Bellocq comes out very well. Tea is like wine . . . 100 years ago, before there was any significant investment in branding and quality standards, or any critical mass of connoisseurs to reward quality producers. The world is full of tea, and 99% of it is mostly awful. Without merchants like Bellocq to curate, you're lost. Sure, you can spend less to get good tea than you would spend at Bellocq, but only if you acquire a lot of expertise, and are willing to do a lot of spadework, and suffer some disappointments. (And, trust me, you can spend a lot more, too. Bellocq doesn't play at the real high end of the tea world.) The premium they charge for the extensive work they do and the original contributions they make is quite modest, which is why I buy there again and again.
Plus, I would be lying if I didn't admit that I love the aesthetics of the store and the website. The saffron tissue paper in which shipments come wrapped elevates my mood all by itself. Dealing with Bellocq feels like associating with beauty.
Specific tea blends I like: National Parks Dept. (really unique black blend with evergreen accents), Gypsy Caravan (perfect smoky black tea with rose accents), White Duke (white tea with Earl Grey bergamot), Kikuya (Japanese sencha with rose), Le Hammeau (lovely floral tisane), Matcha Genmaicha (a sensational update to the classic proletarian blend of sencha and roasted rice). The pure teas are generally excellent examples of their types. The one caveat I have is that the small number of pu-erh teas I have bought there have clearly been selected for mildness, which is not my personal taste.