I eventually came to obsess over wine around 2003 via craft beer and tea. I feel like wine (and bourbon... and scotch... and cognac) have taken a little something away from my appreciation of both beer and tea. But given how much my appreciation for tea influenced how I approached wine, I thought it might be appropriate to suggest you try something similar in reverse.
Especially in India, there are particular estates as well as the obvious English classification system for how the leaves are picked. It's not hard -- especially if you use a place like Upton Tea as has been suggested -- to put together reasonably priced orders of teas that provide real, honest-to-goodness regional comparisons, leaf quality comparisons, flush (ie, first, second, third picking of the year), etc.
With Chinese tea, it's rare to find importers that note the farmer/estate, but the regional and production differences are easier to understand. It's almost Burgundian in how it's more about province/region than producer. Particular places are revered. And history often dictates how most of the teas are made: The teas from on/near the Wuyi mountains are, as far as I can tell, just about always made into a mineral-driven, slightly earthy oolong, and they're incredibly good.
Anyhow, when I was first getting into tea, I'd order 3, 4, or 5 teas that all related to one another in a few of those ways and then I'd order 3 or 4 random "fun" sample packets -- a rare green tea, a crazy expensive oolong, etc. And I'd use those samples to inform my next full order. I'd do that every couple of months, and it was incredibly instructive.
Of course, as a Detroiter, after I met Putnam and some other wine nerds in town, I started to see the similarities and applied the same approach to wine. Estates and all the "fine tippy etc" stuff translated nicely to terroir and crus and premier tries. I'd buy wine in similar ways to buying tea, buying clusters of Beaujolais, etc. Reading books where applicable. I suspect you'll find the exact same applies in reverse -- you just need to decide what you like the most and where to dive in first.
I highly recommend Upton Tea for the sheer breadth of its selections but also their speed and their sample program. There's a small tea importer in Detroit now that offers online orders called Joseph Wesley Tea. I cannot speak highly enough about their teas, especially their #06, which is essentially a tea leaf normally reserved for white teas that is given a black tea treatment to insanely delicious results. The owner lived in China for years, developing an affinity for great teas, and he brings in top notch stuff.
Maybe it's just living in Ann Arbor/Detroit, but all the Tea Gschwendner I've gotten has tasted kind of stale.
Just one lurker's opinion...
