Tea in Film

I recently asked my Twitter peeps about their favorite movie scenes involving tea. Here are their responses:

Winnie at Teance said, "the scene in Fearless with Jet Li before the fight is good."

HonestTea said, "The Mad Hatter's tea party from AliceinWonderland!"

JeeJuno said, "Karen and Felicity drink tea in a scene from Out of Africa, not a grand scene, but a GRAND movie!!"

dcbuck said, "The only scene I can even think of is the bit from the second Karate Kid movie just before the very dramatic storm sets in."

Also, thetearooms linked this segment on tea at Harrods. (I visited Harrods' tea department when I was in London. Fantastic!) The film clip includes an amusing (and very dated) segment on how to brew tea with a teabag. YouTube kindly led me to this old film how to brew tea with information that's (mostly) still relevant today. (I love the use of the words "tea juice" throughout...)

What's your favorite movie scene involving tea? Seen any interesting old tea films lately?

New Honest Tea Mate Reviews

I recently got to try the new Honest Tea Yerba Mates. I'm glad to see more yerba mate RTDs on the market. Yerba mate is high in antioxidants and caffeine, but it seems it doesn't give as many people jitters as coffee. However, AOL recently published a popular health article about possible health risks associated with yerba mate. I guess it was a bad time to launch the line, but the "teas" themselves are pretty good. They're made with green (unroasted) mate, I'm guessing for more antioxidants. I'm pretty sure it's why they taste more bitter than other mates I've had, but I'm more of a tea person than a mate person, so I'm not positive. (Any thoughts, readers?) The first two I tried were pretty sweet (I wish Honest Tea's "slightly sweet" approach was a little more slight than sweet, but that's a whole other topic...), but the third was awesome. Reviews:

Agave Mate: Both bitter and sweet, but in a very different way from when I, say, home brew super-strong mate in a gourd and add a bit of agave nectar. My least favorite, perhaps because I like my version so much better. :)

Tropical Mate: Aside from a bitter aftertaste, I really like this one. It is definitely tropical and the tartness of the fruit balances out the sweetness of the cane sugar very well. The thing I don't like it this -- the label pictures fresh fruit, says "A Tad Sweet" and clearly indicates that it is yerba mate. Seeing that, I think, "Mmm... fruit juice and mate. It has vitamins from fruit and caffeine from mate. Win!" However, it contains less than 1% juice and has about 1/6th the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee. Now, I'm glad the label is also informative enough to tell me these things, but it seems somehow... (no, not dishonest)... misleading. Still, it's tasty enough that I'd drink it again.

Sublime Mate: It has the same labeling issues as Tropical Mate, but it's definitely my favorite of the three. Great lime aroma and taste, no bitter aftertaste and (I think) an ideal balance of mate boldness, lime tang and cane-sugary sweetness for a lightly sweet RTD. It seems like a perfect refreshment for a hot summer day. Seriously if you like lime and/or mate check it out ASAP.

Have any of you tried these? What did you think?

Quick Update

I'm finally getting to the point in moving that I feel (mostly) settled. It has been a long process, as I moved from NYC to Charlotte, NC, and also moved in with my husband (we had never lived together before), continued my usual load of freelance work and started up a new freelance assignment upon arrival. Now that I'm more settled, I'm looking forward to three things:

Seeing my local friends more often (I'm from here, so I still have friends here)
Exploring the city (It has changed so much since I moved away!)
Posting more here about my recent tea adventures (which include tasting the Honest Tea's new yerba mates and Green Tea Mango and Numi's puerhs, doing Urbana staff training and getting ready for the World Tea Expo)

Tea at Google

Last week, I had the pleasure of eating lunch and drinking tea at the NYC Google office. For those who haven't heard already, Google takes exceptional care of its employees and includes fantastic meals as a company perk. A Google friend was kind enough to invite me for a meal (incredible raw beet-cabbage puree with cranberries, tasty polenta-crust pizza, fresh berries, raw vegan Swedish meatballs) and tea. Most of the food was local and they give employees the option of joining a crop share with a local farm. It was very interesting to see their tea offerings, as they are thought of as a more "energy drink and espresso" kind of place. They offered: ITO EN's Fruit Tea, ITO EN's Teas' Tea, Honest Tea, yerba mate, brewed tropical black tea (not actually very good), Mighty Leaf pyramid bags, and kombucha. Good selection! They used to carry ITO EN's Sencha Shot, but my Google guide said she hadn't seen it around in a while. Too bad--they're very good and they parallel the whole "energy drink" thing well. Perhaps they'll pick up Oi Ocha now that it's widely available in the U.S. They also offer a casual afternoon tea service with finger sandwiches, sweets, and Mighty Leaf. I think it would be really cool if they did cross-cultural afternoon teas that introduce employees to foods and teas from around the world! Apparently, they discussed it, but it hasn't come to fruition yet. I'll let you know if I hear any more on the topic.

New Honest Tea Teas

Honest Tea (who recently had 40% of their shares purchased by Coca Cola) launched a new line of flavors and packaging designs with "brighter" tastes and colors. The packaging looks great, but what's going on beyond basic appearances?

They tout higher levels of EGCG on the bottles with a bar indicating the levels in each drink. Their website doesn't list ingredients, but I have the feeling the "significantly higher (level) than most other brands" are from an extract, which has questionable benefits compared to the real thing. (I wish I'd had time to check the label when I saw it in a store recently! If any of you see it in person, will you let me know?)

They also added the words "energy tea" to two flavors' names. One is a blend of green tea and yerba mate, which makes sense, but the other is a blend of green tea and white tea... ??? They claim it is because they use green energy, but I find it very misleading to call it an "energy tea."

Their Consumer Reports award-winning flavor, Lori's Lemon, was reincarnated as Lemon Black Tea, this time with more cola... I mean sugar!

They also modified Peach Oo-La-Long to make a new flavor, Peach White Tea. I seem to remember that Peach Oo-La-Long was a sweeter-than-usual flavor created to satisfy the sweet tooth of the comic artist who draws "Bloom County," yet, like the lemon black tea's changes, the new variation on it has 10 (rather than 8) grams of sugar per 8 ounces. With two servings of tea in each bottle, that's an increase of 4 grams of sugar per bottle. Correspondingly, the calories jump from 63 per bottle to 85 per bottle. Not so bad as a Coke, but not so (comparatively) healthy as Honest Tea's teas used to be.

On the one hand, I hate to see Coke mess up a good thing. On the other, if this is what the market wants, it's better than people drinking soda, right? It's a tough call. I try to stand by the idea that quality tea doesn't need a lot of dressing up. However, Starbucks isn't just popular for its burnt beans--it's also the sugar syrup and whipped toppings that keep people craving more. There's a lot of room to move around between a pure, unflavored tea and Snapple's overpowering sweetness. I guess Honest Tea is, ultimately, just expanding its range within that area (albeit in one direction!).

If any of you readers have tried them, please let me know what you think! Do you prefer the old flavors or the new ones? What do you think of the packaging? Is the EGCG an extract? Is Coke making cola out of Honest Tea, or are these flavors true to your own idea of what tea is about? I'd love to hear your thoughts!


Honest Tea's new packaging and Citrus Green Energy Tea in action at an NYC bodega.