Possible Benefits to Fortifying Alcoholic Drinks with Tea

Including tea in your cocktails is a great idea—the flavors and complexity of tea work incredibly well with spirits, as my last few posts attest. But here's another thought: The potential health benefits contained within tea leaves are well known. So what happens when alcohol is infused with tea? The chemical constituents of the tea, …

Infusing Spirits with Tea

Chemistry doesn't ever come to mind when I brew a cup of tea, but the process is indeed chemistry: I extract the chemical compounds from the tea leaves and transfer them into the hot water. In this case, the type of extraction is infusion, which simply means that I steep the leaves in water (the …

Tea Expands Culinary and Mixology Possibilities

The annual World Tea Expo fosters exploration, innovation, networking. Tea industry producers, importers and distributors, tea shop owners, restauranteurs, and tea drinkers sample and discuss teas, teach or attend classes, peruse tea-related merchandise, and network. Why should you care? Well, products that catch the eye of attendees may possibly turn up in your local tea …

Tea and Alcohol Work Well Together

Next week's World Tea Expo is taking place alongside the Bar & Restaurant Expo, which is fitting. Although we may view tea and alcoholic beverages as two entities, they've long been entwined. Europeans were first introduced to tea in the early 1600s, although only the wealthiest could afford such a luxury. At the same time, …

Salt-in-Tea Shakes Things Up

Have you seen the latest tempest in the [salted] teapot? Recently, American chemist Michelle Francl had the audacity (!) to recommend a sprinkle of salt in your tea. Which prompted the Brits to charges of heresy. (Read story here.) However, adding salt to tea is nothing new. Chinese tea master Lu Yu, who wrote the …

The Evolution of the (Souvenir) Teaspoon, Part 3

In my last post, we had reached the mid-1800s, entering into the advent of leisure travel in Europe, a period when souvenir collecting evolved into spoon collecting, both in Europe and the United States. By displaying a collection that advertised where you had been, you demonstrated your interest in the world, your ability to travel, …

The Evolution of the Teaspoon, Part 2

Here I continue to look at how utilitarian teaspoons turned into souvenirs that we hang on a wall! As mentioned in my previous post, both teaspoons and tablespoons existed by 1704. Still, because tea was a precious commodity in the West, both teacup and teaspoon were very small. However, around 1710, the East India Company …

The Evolution of the Teaspoon, Part 1

Way before the pandemic disrupted, well, pretty much everything, TeaHaus was gifted a set of decorative teaspoons—which I'm finally getting to, and thank you! (What I did not get to was polishing the silver-plated spoons.) At first glance, these diminutive spoons are definitely in souvenir territory—but inspection proves that some are very detailed. And some …

Keemun Black Tea

Having looked at two Chinese black teas from Yunnan Province in my last post, I turn now to keemun. Like the Yunnan black teas, keemun teas hail from China and are highly valued. Therefore, tea producers want to protect the reputation of these unique teas and ensure that cheaper teas aren't being passed off as …

Golden Yunnan Black Teas

Yunnan Province in southwest China is considered the birthplace of tea, and the mountainous region remains one of the world's top tea producers. Interestingly, demand for tea in this area has fluctuated at times, which allowed the native large-leaf, assamica-variety Camellia sinensis tea plants to spread and become part of the natural vegetation. In their …