by Heidi Kyser

San Francisco-based Red Circle Tea is offering an exclusive, limited edition tea, most of whose profits will go back to the Buddhist monastery that produced it.

Named Tribute Red Jade #18, the tea is an organically farmed Taiwanese red tea (the leaves are completely oxidized) made from grafting Burmese Assamica to a Taiwanese native tea plant, according to Red Circle. It sells for $85 an ounce ($75 per ounce for two ounces, $65 per ounce for four ounces), and only three pounds of it remain available for purchase at Red Circle Tea's Web site.

But the company isn't doing this for the money, said co-owner Sina Carroll. Red Circle is sending 80 percent of the profits from sales of the tea back to the monastery where it was hand-made by a master tea maker whom she declined to name: "One man, two hands, 50 grams of tea and a bamboo basket for 90 minutes. This tea is technically perfect," Carroll said.

The project came about as a result of the five trips she and Carnie Tran , Red Circle co-owner, have made to Asia since founding their company in August 2007. Through friends of friends, Carroll said, the two have had the opportunity to spend time at small tea gardens and monasteries where rare and antique varietals are produced.

The pair came to tea through a background in artisanal foods, such as coffee, chocolate, olive oil and chai. When they both left the same beverage company in San Francisco at the same time, they decided to pool their skills and passion for tea to form Red Circle. The company does online retail and wholesale, as well as tastings and events at both public and private venues. They import their teas themselves.

Carroll said the Tribute Red Jade #18 project was a long time in the offing: "We have been hoping and asking and waiting for two years now, since we met the people on this farm."

Although all the tea produced there is high-grade, she added, it is processed mechanically. Yet the workers show their love of the tea through such painstaking details as using honey and soybeans for fertilizer, and trapping pests with flypaper wrapped around stems. Carroll and Tran wanted to give the monks the opportunity to practice their ancient craft of hand-making the tea, by funding the labor-intensive process through sales to American buyers.

"We felt it was important to make the connection between the people who drink the tea and the people who crafted it," Carroll said. "It's about going back to the farm and letting them know that consumers all the way on the other side of the ocean are grateful and thankful and surprised and awed by what they do."

She added that it has always been part of Red Circle's mission to teach American customers about the difference between "the 59 cent cup you get at Ikea and a fine hand-crafted piece of pottery; the difference between tea dust and tea that is hand picked and processed."

Asked if she would repeat the labor- and cost-intensive effort, Carroll said, "We're hoping that we could do it again next year. It depends on the success this year, the response we're able to give back to the tea farm. It's not a commercial tea that we'll ever be able to import by the cargo-load. It's not about that."