Posts filed under 'Tea The Beverage'
In the first article of this series, I wrote about choosing a tea based on the time of day you most want to brew a pot of tea. Today I want you to consider what flavor of tea you enjoy or want to try. This will also be helpful when choosing tea for your party or event, as the flavor of the tea is important to consider if you want it to coordinate with the food you choose to serve.
To decide what flavor tea you might enjoy, ask yourself the following questions.
Are you a traditionalist? Earl Grey tea, one of the most well-known traditional tea blends is flavored with the citrus-fruit bergamot. All Earl Grey tea varieties include some of this flavoring. I recommend everyone trying Earl Grey tea at least once. It’s unique and famous flavor needs to be a part of a complete tea education. But it’s important to try it before serving it or buying more than an ounce to make sure, because of its unusual flavor.
Do you always stop to smell the flowers? Probably the most common flower used to flavor tea is jasmine. Widely popular, green teas in particular are enjoyed this way. I can always tell when jasmine’s been used to flavor a tea and it shows up more often than I would expect. I don’t particularly care for it, it reminds me of drinking tea in a Crabtree and Evelyn shop. But many people really love their jasmine tea, and again, it should be tried at least once. Roses are another common floral addition to tea. Harney and Sons sells a white wedding tea with roses I really enjoy.
Do you consider fresh fruit the best snack? Both my husband and I enjoy drinking fruit-flavored teas and we often choose our flavor based on the season. For example, we chose a peach-flavored black tea to drink through the summer heat. In spring we drank cherry. I asked my supplier for samples of their pomegranate or cranberry teas as I considered an option for the fall. You might want to try something completely opposite and drink your peaches in the cold months. Whatever you decide, know that tea comes in almost every fruit and fruit combination of flavors you can imagine.
Can you still not imagine ever enjoying tea like you love your coffee? Consider the teas that come with plenty of caffeine and provide a rich flavor. Many black estate teas, like Assams or Ceylons provide a rich, thick “flavor”. Traditional blends like Irish or English Breakfast might be a possibility for you, as well. Also, I have been told, men especially enjoy Lapsang Souchong for its rich (and smoky) flavor. Like I described in my Tea Definitions article, Lapsang Souchong is modeled after the tea that came over land from China in early trade routes, affected by the smoke of the traders’ pipes.
Want the trendiest flavor? One of the most popular flavored teas is currently chai tea. There’s American chai, Indian chai, and even Chai Lattes available in every corner coffee bar. Blenders spice chai with ginger, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and sometimes pepper. Most people drink chai with milk and sugar. (In my experience, many coffee bars or pre-packaged chai drinks are WAY too sweet. Just a caution).
Would you find all that flavor distracting? Because tea is often associated with a quieter life, meditation, and Eastern Culture, many people enjoy a subtler flavor than the ones previously described. If this is you consider trying Darjeeling or Oolong teas, a peppermint tisane, or a white tea. This is especially important to remember if you choose an Asian theme for your tea event. Be sure to visit my brewing tips if one of these teas are your choice. The subtler teas are easier to ruin, but the leaves can be brewed over and over again.
Is dessert a daily food group? I’ve mentioned many times my favorite teas are dessert teas…ones flavored for the sweet desserts I miss since discovering a dairy allergy and facing forty. Teas flavored with caramel, vanilla, and almonds are my particular favorites. There are many chocolate teas on the market and almost any nutty flavor you could want. Some flavored black teas are more adulterated than others, but compared to so many lousy additives we put in our bodies (anyone else remember consuming entire boxes of Red Vines at the movies or was that just me?), I consider a pot of my favorite dessert teas a definite improvement. And they help me control my weight. So I don’t worry about the additives at this point.
Are you a purist? Thankfully, there’s a tea for all of us. If you want a tea with nothing added, research your green teas and consider a gunpowder or Dragonwell tea. Just remember, especially for purists, sometimes controlling the quality of an imported product can be difficult, so ask lots of questions. But green teas can provide the most natural, pure flavor.
Do you pick your tea based on flavor? What are your favorites? I’d love to hear all about it in the comments.
September 28th, 2007
Choosing a tea can be like choosing a wine. The choices, origins, personalities, and prices seem unlimited. Granted, the tea aisle in the grocery store isn’t quite as extensive as the wine aisle…yet. But especially if you decide to invest in loose-leaf tea, visit a tearoom, or tea bar with so many choices, where do you start?
Like wine, choosing a tea can simply be based on what you like. Always ask for sample if possible, or speak up if you order a tea and don’t enjoy it. However, if you want to be armed with some knowledge for your choice, there are a number of factors to consider. (I’m reminded of the time when I began choosing wines and I asked a friend who often offered wine with the meals at her home how to choose. “Oh, I just pick the label I like,” she said. I tasted and purchased some lousy wine that way.)
For the next few days, I plan to share with you what these factors are, how to consider them, and some of my personal recommendations as a result. Today let’s consider the time of day you want to drink tea or host your event.
As my regular readers know, I firmly believe that starting a daily tea ritual is one of the simplest ways to bring beauty and health into your every day life. I cannot recommend it enough. So ask yourself, when during the day would you most enjoy sitting down with a cup of tea? Or, have you decided what time of day you will host your tea party?
Like a good hobbit, I’ve identified a number of times during the day where I can see the benefit of including a daily tea ritual. They are:
- upon first waking
- with breakfast
- late morning (elevenses)
- after school with your children
- traditional tea time (usually falls somewhere between 3 and 5pm)
- during dinner
- after dinner with or in lieu of dessert
- before bed
Upon waking or with breakfast is when a touch of caffeine is often the most appreciated. This is when I drink the strong blacks. This can include traditional blends, an estate tea, or a flavored black. If you are looking for a morning tea I recommend English Breakfast, a hearty Ceylon, or a spicy Chai.
Taking time for an elevenses break is often difficult. However, if you spend the majority of your day in a sedentary job, it provides a wonderful excuse to take a break, stretch your legs, and brew some tea to help get you through a couple more hours of work. If you work away from home, a tea that isn’t as picky about brewing time or water temperature is a good choice. If I worked away from home every day, I would definitely invest in an all-in-one triniTEA electric tea maker that boils water, steeps leaves, and filters tea at a touch of a button. If you can control water temp and brewing time, I recommend drinking a green tea. If you can’t invest in a rooibos.
“Meet me for tea at three” is a common phrase I use at Tea Party Girl. If you can, especially if you are home with young children, consider implementing a simple afternoon tea in your daily routine. In our home, three in the afternoon was magic hour where all my children’s wishes for computer time, sweets, and videos came true. I would make a pot of tea, lay out some cookies, get them settled down for “media time” and indulge in some quiet time with my tea in another part of the house. Pots of tea to welcome children home on a colder school day can be a wonderful tradition as well. Take my word for it, children learn to love tea! A few teas I recommend introducing to children that you will enjoy too are flavored decaf blacks or rooibos teas, especially with hints of vanilla or caramel.
If you want to host a traditional tea party and not base it around a meal, mid-afternoon is the best time. I wrote an article that includes tea and food pairings to help your decision about what to serve based on your menu. If you want to serve tea during dinner, the traditional “high tea” (dinner served at a high table vs. afternoon tea traditionally served at a low table and not a meal), consider the food pairing recommendations as well. My favorite tea to drink with dinner is a naturally decaffeinated oolong.
In my home, if we host anyone for dinner, we always offer a tea afterwards. I choose this more than I choose to serve tea during dinner, truthfully. It’s a wonderful addition to dessert. If I want a little touch of something after dinner and SHOULDN’T eat dessert, I drink a dessert-based rooibos. Sometimes I add a touch of milk or ehem, brandy and a beautiful sugar (not completely calorie free, but better than a slice of cake!).
Maybe your ideal time to relax with a cup of tea is after the house has quieted down for the day and you need a transition before bed. Tea I recommend drinking during this time are ones that include chamomile or peppermint.
So, after reading this article, what time of day will you drink your tea? I’d love to hear from novice and experienced tea drinkers alike. If you already drink tea everyday and could only pick one pot per day, when would you brew it?
September 26th, 2007
Yesterday, James Norwood Pratt taught me to call tea the most affordable luxury. You may not be able to purchase much from Beverly Hills, but the boutique tea importer, The Art of Tea, provides organic, specialty teas “while ensuring the employees and the teas are treated with great respect.” I’m glad to hear it!
Art of Tea contacted me and asked which particular teas I would enjoy sampling. I asked for dessert teas. They are my best-sellers locally and truthfully, what this party girl consistently reaches for first. Finding dessert teas “treated with great respect” can be difficult (some dessert tea providers merely spray on artificial flavors) and I wondered what might come.
To my delight, I received four rooibos-based dessert teas with names like Caramelized Pear and Pumpkin Pie. As I type, I’m sipping their Velvet Tea, a chocolate-mint and vanilla-based tea. These teas complement our first rainy days here in Northern California. Truly, there is no way I would rather drink my daily fluids than with a liter of dessert rooibos tea. There’s no sugar or caffeine in any of them and it costs me just a little over a dollar to fill my one-liter carafe.
The key to rooibos is brewing it long enough with boiling water to fully release the flavor. Rooibos tea is difficult to make too strong. It’s easy, however, to make it weak. The first Art of Tea sample I tried was the Caramelized Pear (wouldn’t you?) but I only brewed it for five minutes. The family taste-testers agreed it was a little weak. The Pumpkin Pie sample, however, (my personal favorite) I brewed for a full seven minutes. A fuller flavor resulted.
Art of Tea also provides the beautiful blooming teas, one of the latest (at least to America) tea trends. My children don’t drink the tea, but love the experience of watching the hand-tied tea leaves unfold. Wouldn’t yours?
The Art of Tea sells their dessert rooibos teas for $3.50/ounce. That’s around .75/4-cup pot. Yes, Mr. Pratt, tea, even in Beverly Hills, truly is an affordable luxury.
Enjoy browsing their website, as I did and discover The Art of Tea. They offer tea sommelier training, great tea ware (including a travel tea press I may choose to acquire), and a tea-of-the month club.
Have you ever tried a blooming tea? Is it a regular choice for tea drinking? I’d love for you to share your experience in the comments. Myself, I enjoy serving them with meals as they add a wonderful display to the table.
September 20th, 2007
Life is full, my dear friends, very, very, full. I need breaks for tea more than ever. It didn’t happen today except early morning, but time for tea at three remains my plumb-line. If too many pass by without time for tea, I know life is definitely “beyond the boundaries”.
Before I left to experience the miracle of Calaveras Big Trees last Friday, I made a few tea discoveries worth sharing. AND, I may have perfected my tea brewing in the woods!
- In light of my recent posting on taking tea in the big city of San Francisco, and working from a 1999 publication, I learned of a brand new Tea Read debuting this week, “The Way to Tea: Your Adventure Guide to San Francisco Tea Culture” by Jennifer Sauer. I’m excited to see this read, because it’s written by a photographer who caught the tea bug. This means beautiful pictures to accompany our Tea Read. I’ve contacted the author to ask for a review copy, so hopefully we’ll hear from her soon.
- My tea in the woods proved better than ever, based on a few key factors:
- Bottled Water
- Measuring my water based on the carafe I took with me instead of using guess-work
- Pre-measured tea leaves
- A camping teakettle for boiling water
- Watching a watch instead of estimating the brewing time
Those of us who drink tea on a daily basis still find brewing at home to yield the best result. I can’t tell you how many lousy cups of tea I’ve drank on the road, both served by others and brewed myself without my at-home equipment. So this trip, I surrendered, and included all factors of at-home brewing I possibly could while out in the woods. It worked.
Also, in light of Friday’s post, I wanted to point out a few opportunities to support some self-made artisans:
- Stephanie, my new blogging friend and faithful reader pointed out to me an Etsy vendor who provides The Tea Party “touches of something” delivered to your door. Could be an option for those of us who don’t enjoy baking!
- I am semi-participating today in a “Make Mine Pink” tea party. Many other women bloggers are as well, some of whom are artisans. I haven’t yet gone through the entire list, but it would be worth a perusal. Remember, supporting an artist not connected with “Corporate America” is capitalism at it’s best. Find something you consider beautiful, treat yourself, and support a woman’s creativity and enterprise at the same time.
Lastly, I finally took the time to watch “Miss Potter” this weekend, the lovely bio-pic of Beatrix Potter, characterized by Renee Zellweger. One word. Delightful. Children’s literature, an independent woman, English aristocracy, romance, AND preserving nature…all wrapped up in one. BY THE WAY, my swooning friends, Ewan McGregor SINGS to her…sigh). But I mention it, because wrapped up in all this English culture, the movie shows Miss Potter taking tea practically every other scene. Tea scenes galore. Delightful.
September 10th, 2007
This month over at Scribbit, the September Write-Away Contest theme is Learning. I’ve spent a lot of time on this site working to provide content to my readers, but this is the entry where I commit to work on learning what I don’t know well: the source of the tea I love and how my decisions affect others. Seemed the entry to enter. Be sure to visit Scribbit and enter one of your own, if you like!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I feel I must take a moment to mention how important it is to remember the people behind our tea parties and the “stuff” we accumulate to host them.
Earlier this week, I attended a tag sale of a woman in my neighborhood. She began collecting tea party “stuff” without reservation 5-6 years ago and decided it was time to purge and hold a sale. Her loss was my gain (I picked up about $50 worth of teacups, Christmas decorations, and books), but I wish I could show you a picture to help you understand the amount of STUFF she marked for sale. The sale FILLED her garage, driveway, side yard AND spilled over substantially into the cul-de-sac where she lives. As a clutter-phobic, I was horrified.
But her reality is disposable income, raised children, a husband who doesn’t fight her, and a three-bedroom home she turned into a storage unit. Her passion became the tea party, hosting them in her home, and she–as we say out West–”went whole hog” buying everything she could find that struck her fancy.
Yes, I hate clutter, but more than that the scene before me broke my heart because of what it represented in the big picture: a lack of wisely-used resources to accumulate stuff that ultimately became a burden instead of a blessing. It represented stuff for landfills (imagine the amount of packaging this one household threw away!) shipped from countries far away, with almost all of it carrying little worth in the long-run (in other words, nothing one would show visitors when they came over…”This is my grandmother’s, handed down from her grandmother, that I intend to give my granddaughter”.
Lately, when I type “tea” into Google News, the majority of stories involve the struggles tea plantation workers face. As I read, I don’t completely comprehend the problems or the local government’s solution. But I do know it would be easy to ignore, continue to buy what I want, and hope for the best. Choosing to be informed is the “harder” road, but more and more the only way my conscience will let me be.
I am not an expert on our growing global economy by any means. But I know enough to recognize that the tea I love to drink cannot be grown locally and needs to be shipped, most likely, from continents away. This means a number of things, including different government labor laws and possibly questionable environmental practices.
Yes, it is choosing the informed over the ignorant journey that I feel compelled to walk and encourage you in as well. Here’s a couple ideas I have to help us and would love to hear your ideas, too:
- Be prepared to ask a few key questions of your tea suppliers. “Do you have any information about the estate workers this tea comes from?.” If they don’t, see if you can at least learn an estate name and look it up on the Internet. Some tea plantations are all-in-one communities with housing and schooling on the estate grounds. That’s my goal, to find out which ones these are and how to buy that tea.
- When shopping for wants, try to buy second-hand, from artisans, or know the origin of the product. I don’t know for sure, for example, that factory workers in China are being exploited for my “Made in China” item, but I would rather own one antique Wedgworth teacup than ten “Made in China” cups from Target until I know for sure.
- Invest in microfinance in tea producing countries. Microfinancing is an economic term I only recently learned about, but it basically provides seed money for the poor to become entrepreneurs all over the world. If microfinance can support a family in India who wants to work in the tea business, I want to support that!
- Even though most of us can’t buy tea locally, buy locally what you can. A terrific book to help explain why this is so important is one I’m currently reading that has a potential to “rock my world”. Here’s a quote:
“Transporting a single calorie of a perishable fresh fruit from California to New York takes about 87 calories worth of fuel. That’s as efficient as driving from Philadelphia to Annapolis, and back, in order to walk three miles on a treadmill in a Maryland gym.”–Barbara Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
It is possible to love things of beauty AND be environmentally aware and economically smart, choosing our purchases carefully. It takes more work, but will you join me as one of the informed? I will continue to research and share with you what I learn about the best way to support the tea party economy the best way we can.
September 7th, 2007
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