Tea bags are essentially filled with tea “dust” - all the leftovers from when the whole leaf tea has been removed and sold as higher grade. You can drink it years later and it won’t hurt you, but it’ll be weak. While it’s good to have tea bags on hand for convenience, whole leaf tea will provide much more flavor and caffeine bang for your buck over time.

English Breakfast and Irish Breakfast are strong staples, often found in a sealed tin ready for the shelf. Sometimes it’s Mylar inside a tin. Dry cool storage is key, like you’re storing cigars.

Specialty teas by the pound can be priced like wine and get very expensive, often due to rarity of supply and demand. I know a company that would buy and sit on tons of certain kinds of tea (rare in maybe only a few pounds $200+/lb, as well as more common in giant stacks) in locked climate controlled storage, as much to keep it away from other vendors as to supply their own production runs. Some never got sold at all. Add to that all the spices and floral additives for blends. They did keep tabs on internal stock shelf life and do intensive quality control.

That was pre-Covid. I’m sure the yearly buying spree trips must’ve taken a big hit on their supply. Tea is another trade item that will see drastic availability issues from political upheaval, shipping backlogs, and definitely climate change. Picking is still done by hand in abysmal conditions on mountainsides or tropics (that companies try to downplay), and dried and processed in ovens and on the floor, long before it arrives here or the UK in big sacks as an import. Tea labels you’ve heard of do their own “secret” proprietary blends, and much of the focus is on packaging and marketing. They are still reliant on centuries old traditions of trade and family dynasties, in cash deals with grower relationships developed over years far from home, and getting it all through customs once it’s shipped.

Now that I write this, I see it’s not that far off from the drug trade, minus as much ammo - for now. Like other consumables, stagger puchases, enjoy it as you have it, and rotate it out. Maybe a small hoard is wise if you love tea more than coffee.