Frozen Tea Treat

Wise Acre has launched a new line of frozen tea treats for adults called Frosteas.
The company's aim--"Take back the frozen dessert isle and make products for adults." For each recipe, they sweeten organic, fresh-brewed teas and tisanes with molasses or honey remember their mottos, "No fruit!" and "It must taste great in gin or vodka." Yum! In addition to the taste appeal, New Yorkers are instant fans of the company's "smart ass" attitude. Their president, Jim Picariello, says, "What other food companies call 'Quality Control,' we call 'Taste each batch and make sure it tastes awesome enough'." Hah! They are currently available primarily in East Coast chains like Whole Foods, Wegmans, and Hannafords, though they are hoping to expand to the Midwest soon. Unfortunately, their website is down (too popular?) but you can read more about their Frosteas here. Perhaps I can get my hands on some soon... I'll let you know how it is!

Expo Sample Reviews

Today, I'm going to review samples from Linde Lane. They gave out standardized goodie bags to everyone who came to their booth, which is a good way to get your products out there. Included in the doggie bag were two of their "Kids Tea," their TEAthbrush, and decks of tea playing cards. I'll be reviewing the first three items and giving the last one out to a lucky reader.

Many people want to give their kids tea, but are concerned about which herbs are safe and whether or not they should give their kids caffeine. Once the safety and caffeine concerns are out of the way, they have to deal with kids' finicky flavor preferences--sweet and simple is usually best, but that's not what most adults look for in a good tea. Linde Lane takes the guesswork out off the equation by providing "Kids Tea," which are just what they sound like (and what they would look like with an appropriately placed apostrophe)--"teas" for kids. They have simple flavor profiles and no caffeine. I tried both flavors: Rock A Bye Baby (chamomile mint)* and Strawberry Shortcake (flavored rooibos). Rock A Bye Baby was comparable to a VERY simple version of a tisane I used to serve at Urbana Cityspa & Teabar called Serene. (Serene also has jasmine blossoms, lavender, and lemon myrtle to round out the taste.) Strawberry Shortcake smelled and tasted, well, just like strawberry shortcake without the cream. From Linde Lane's site:

"Now you can have your own Strawberry Shortcake, in a teacup. Our tea taste (sic) like strawberry shortcake without the whip cream; but you can easily fix that. After you have served your warm tea, spray beautiful floral buds of whip cream into each cup to delight children."

Super!

The TEAthbrush was astoundingly popular amongst Expo attendees. It's a nice toothbrush with some text about how tea is good for teeth and regular brushing removes tea stains. The only thing that made the actual toothbrush different from most was its "mouth cleaner"--a ribbed back on the opposite side of the bristles. So, why is it a TEAthbrush instead of a toothbrush? It comes in three varieties: rooibos, black, and green! However, unlike the TEAth Floss, these types are colors, not flavors. Regardless, it will nicely complement your coffee-flavored sleeping pills.

So, who wants some tea playing cards? First to claim them via email or blog comment gets them. (Don't worry--they aren't flavored either.)

*A chamomile-soaked washcloth can help with teething, but if your baby has allergies, it may be unsafe to give him/her chamomile. Of course, kids hate being called babies, so there's an air of mystery surrounding Rock A Bye Baby's name.

Tea-Shirt

A few months back, I saw this "tea"-shirt on Cafe Press. Cool! However, I wish they had an "I Love My Nerdy Tea Chick" shirt as well. There are enough of us around with people who love us to warrant it.

Adagio's Custom Blends

Adagio has announced a new option on their site: customer creation of custom blends. Returning customers can now place orders for their own blends of Adagio's teas. This seems like a very exciting idea for people who have developed a palate of flavored teas and want to experiment in that range, or for people who have a special occasion and want a themed tea to match. It reminds me of another cool beverage trend from about 8 years ago--Jones Soda's custom labels. Of course, the teas are much healthier. :)

Here's another cool online marketing trend I noticed recently: software that reads food product nutrition labels for its online shoppers. This is great for vegetarians (like me), people who have specific allergies, or people who follow other dietary restrictions (Halal, Kosher, etc.). Cool!

SXSW Day One

Arrived safely in Austin. Got the party rolling last night with my Austin friends and their friends. Today, I:

Figured out the local transit system (which is better than you might guess)
Interviewed Sweet Leaf Tea (based in Austin) about their RTD sweet tea
Saw an art exhibit on growing edibles in your yard (and on sustainability in general... Actually there was an overlap between this exhibit and one I saw in London at The Tate Modern last summer.)
Went out for amazing tea and food with my friend Austin (Yes, his name is Austin and he lives in Austin. He's also a grad student at UT Austin.)
Visited the local food co-op, where they carry tea-kettle egg timers
Bought a gun
Went show shopping
Swang on a genuine front-porch swing
Drank some "tea" soda that turned out to only have tea extract (lame)

Tonight I'm going to some shows. Tomorrow I'll tell you who I heard and how they were (IMHO--I'm a tea expert, not a music expert!), as well as any more tea news I might have.

More Cool Teaware

You may remember that a while back I wrote a teaware post on Charles and Marie and followed it up with their (then) new product, the "On/Off" mug. Well, they sold out of their "On/Off" mug almost immediately and have decided to sell a new "Hot/Cold" version (with a presale to make sure they have enough this time around).

Here are a few of their other tea products that I haven't talked about yet:

cheeky NYC-streets-meets-Dutch-china 5-piece tableware set

super-engineered "radiator" mugs

a little something for those of you still drinking tea from teabags!

Cool! I'm already looking forward to seeing what they carry next!

Flowering Teas Go Mainstream

That's right, handcrafted flowering teas are now being sold at (drumroll please...) Target. Teaposy is their supplier, and they have a variety of teaware, eight types of flowering tea, and several gift sets offered online. (I would imagine that individual stores' offerings vary.) It's interesting to me that flowering teas are becoming so popular for several reasons:

1. They are getting more people to drink loose leaf tea.
2. They are easy to brew, which increases their popularity.
3. They are beautiful, which also increases their popularity.
4. They don't usually excel in the flavor department, which means they may not increase loose leaf tea's popularity overall.

It is my hope that, despite flowering teas' frequent failings in flavor, people will start drinking loose-leaf tea with flowering teas and move on to other loose-leaf teas from there. We'll see what happens!

Read more on flowering teas on VeeTea or check out Target's flowering teas.

New Green Tea Chocolates

Sencha, the company that makes those tasty little green tea mints that everyone loves, has a new product coming out. It's a chocolate bar with a sencha base and a choice of three flavors: Original, Delicate Pear, and Lively Lemongrass. Yum! They come out in March and they will be at the Fancy Food Show this year. Can't wait to try them! Read more about them on The Fancy Food Show's site or Sencha's site. Yum!

Even More CocaCola Tea

UPDATE--Coca Cola Buys Honest Tea (scroll down)

As though Enviga (Coca Cola's "calorie-burning" sparkling "tea" drink) wasn't enough...

"Coca-Cola, which owns the orange juice brand, said Wednesday that it is adding a pomegranate-flavored tea and lemonade to the Minute Maid lineup. The new juices will hit store shelves next month."

http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/stories/2008/01/31/chips0131.html

Be sure not to confuse it with Republic of Tea's bottled Pomegranate Green Tea, anything by anything by POM, or Honest Tea's Pomegranate White Tea with Acai. Hasn't this been done to death already? And isn't the whole point of drinking multiple things with mega-antioxidants (that's the technical term, I swear) to be HEALTHY? I'm sure Coke has loaded their version with even more sugar than the others on the market. Sigh...

UPDATE

Coke has just bought out 40% of Hosest Tea. I guess this makes the pomegranate tea even more redundant than it was. A previous press release from Honest Tea stated that they were unveiling Jasmine Green Energy Tea and Citrus Decaf Spice (both with superfood cupuaçu (pronounced coo-pwAH-soo)), as well as 64-oz bottles of Mint Green Tea and Mango Acai White Tea. I wonder if these will still be released...

Honest Tea has yet to comment on the sale on their site.

Single Serving Teas for Coffee Makers

The Keurig coffee maker (known for its single-serving ""K-Cup" coffee portions) is releasing a line of single-serving Celestial Seasonings teas for use with their coffee maker. The flavors are: Sleepytime, Decaf Green, and India Spice Chai. (Full story.) Convenient for those with a Keurig? Definitely? At all tasty? Probably not. (Decaf prepackaged/basically bagged green tea steeped with boiling water? *Shudder*) I doubt that it will get many coffee drinkers to try out loose leaf any time in the near future.

Microencapsulation

There's a new product called Spun Matrix that uses microencapsulation to make terrible tea taste almost drinkable. I quote, "Spun Matrix is also a great tool to mask off flavors and can be used to incorporate particularly harsh ingredients with the chosen flavor system." It's basically granulated flavor particles that are mixed into low-grade teabags for a stronger not-tea flavor to cover up the already-present bad-tea flavor. Wow, I am SO unimpressed. I'm sure the bulk of the tea industry will love it, though. Sadness...

Read more on this depressing innovation here.

Tea Lip Balm

New York winters can be tough on your skin. I always like to carry lip gloss to protect my lips from the inevitable winter chapping. I recently found a line of tea lip balms that are all-natural and vegan. Cool! Anyone tried them yet? Thoughts?

On a side note, I noticed that they contain natural tea FLAVORS, but not actual tea. This means they don't have any caffeine. However, if they DID, then lip balm would be one way to get it. Caffeine is easily absorbed through the skin, giving rise to a niche market of caffeinated body products like this Shower Shock Caffeinated Soap. Interesting...

PS--For your die hard coffee fans, there's also a line of coffee lip balms.

Tazo Profile

When I worked at Whole Foods, Tazo was a customer favorite. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed when they were bought out by Starbucks. However, when I was India, I saw the extensive nonprofit work they were doing on fair trade tea plantations in Darjeeling and decided to rethink them a bit. Here's an interesting company profile I came across in my research. Enjoy!

Excerpt:

"...tea is making a comeback, with U.S. sales of $3 billion in 2006, up from $2 billion in 2001, excluding restaurants, according to the market-research firm Mintel.

The U.S. market is dominated by three brands — Lipton, AriZona and Snapple — with smaller players like Stash and Numi growing fast.

Specialty tea companies had trouble with rapid growth in the past because tea growers were not producing enough high-quality tea for them, Jage said. That is changing, with more growers providing top-quality teas now that they see sustained demand for it."

Taste of Summer

I'm finally getting settled into the feel of summer. I love New York this time of year because it's warm, but there's still a breeze and the nights cool off. Lately, I've taken to cooling off during the day with some tea. No, I'm not rehashing the myth that "hot tea actually cools you off!!!1 4 real!" I'm talking about cold tea. Yes, there's always iced tea, which can be quite tasty. However, I've been partaking of something a little more exciting: tea granitas. The LA Times put out an article on how to make these icy, refreshing Italian treats. Their recipes and flavor combinations appear to be sound, but they take the better part of a day to prepare. (Eight minutes... plus cooling and freezing time.) Also, they seem a little sweet for my tastes (and I'm a southern-born tea-drinker!). So, while you should check out what they have to say, read on here as well.

I have found a way to make delicious, QUICK, healthy tea granitas. It's simpler than you think. All you have to do is whisk powdered tea (matcha or another quality powdered tea by a company like Muzi), juice, water, spices (optional), and sugar/honey in a shallow, freezer-safe dish, place it flat in the freezer, and rake a fork through it once every hour for four hours. That's it. No brewing, no waiting for the tea to cool. Simple. If you're short on time, but you want to make a tea that you can't find in powdered form (Damn that local grocery store for not carrying powdered Lapsang Souchong!), you can always powder it yourself with a spice grinder or (if pressed) a mortar and pestle.

Here are two recipes I whipped together:

Cranberry-Rooibos Spice Granita
3 cups cranberry juice
1 cup water
2 teaspoons powdered rooibos
1 teaspoon powdered sugar
2 dashes powdered cloves
1 dash powdered cinnamon

White Ginger Orange Granita
3 cups orange juice
1 cup water
2 teaspoons powdered white tea
2 teaspoons ginger syrup*
1 ground allspice berry

Whisk together in a shallow, freezer-safe dish. Place flat in freezer. Rake with a fork once an hour until mostly frozen (about 4 hours). Serve alone, with brioche (the traditional Italian way), with a dollop of creme fraiche, or with a sprig of mint. I love to serve them in these fair trade, hand made Moroccan tea cups.

If you come up with your own recipe, I'd love to hear it! Post it on my Blogger page or send me a note through Vee Tea's "ask" page.



*Ginger syrup is something I make in batches and keep around, but you can also buy it from many specialty grocers. If you want to make it yourself, you can follow this imprecise but effective set of instructions (which I will not dare to call a recipe):

Peel and chop a hunk of ginger, boil it for about 10 minutes in just enough water to keep it covered, measure out a quantity of sugar that you feel is roughly equivalent to the amount of water in the pot, and dissolve the sugar into the boiling water. Remove the pot from heat, strain out the ginger pieces, and you're good to go. It will keep (sealed) in your fridge for several weeks.

OMG! Green tea OD!!!

Too much of a good thing?

Apparently, people can OD on green tea. Sort of. Overuse of supplements of green tea's polyphenols (which contain 50 times the amount in one cup) can lead to liver toxicity. (See link above.) Personally, I'll just stick with the real thing!

Speaking of which, I had a good Nishi (First Flush Sencha) from Rishi today. The astringency and sweetness were well-balanced, and it wasn't overdone (as I find some sencha to be).

Tiny Tea Cozy

Here's something cute to counter the whole "Friday the 13th" thing.

I love crafts. (Well, SOME crafts. I think others are remarkably tacky and bad.) Occasionally, I'll surf crafts sites to see what's going on with the Stitch 'n Bitch revolution. Here's a little something I found that involves crafts AND tea. Fun. (Now if they would only make them for Yi Xing pots . . .)

Tea-Shirts and More

I'm tired of talking about samples at the moment. Instead, I'm going to talk about t-shirts!

Here's another in the my series of internet finds. Some of them are pretty cool. Some, meh. Personally, I like this one best. Check it out, have a good weekend, and (most importantly) enjoy your tea!

Scariest Tea on the Market

While I was at the World Tea Expo, I saw one of the scariest things I have ever seen. Yes, really. I understand that many people want tea and convenience in one. However, there HAS to be a better way than THIS. I mean, this makes even the worst bottled teas look good. Besides, bottled teas are getting better all the time. (For example, Ito' En's new line of canned teas and tisanes are great. When were bottled teas ever "great" before?) I just don't understand why anyone would subject themselves to THIS. (Seriously, click the link. It's so scary. You HAVE to see it. Just don't get sucked in to the animation at the top that displays the "SpoonTea" in action. It's eerily hypnoitic, and it may brainwash you and convince you to actually try this stuff.)

If you've seen anything on par with this or (God forbid) worse, please let me know. I'm considering keeping a list of "creepy teas" on my site, a la the CandyBoots 1974 Weight Watchers' Cards. If there are enough things like this on the market, then somebody needs to do it!

World Tea Expo: Best New Teas

While I was at the World Tea Expo, I got to try some new teas that I really enjoyed. Here are a few.

Ito En had some very nice new bottled teas. I had tried two before, but the one that stood out to me at the Expo was their turmeric infusion. In Okinawa, people drink turmeric infusions before a night of heavy drinking to protect the liver and prevent hangovers. Added bonus--it tastes good.

Newcomer Art of Tea not only had the coolest packaging of the Expo (seriously, check it out), they had a tea that won "Best Iced in Show." I've been wondering when people would make teas like theirs. They are compressed (like pu-erh, but not secondary oxidation), so they are easy to package, transport, and use.

A company that has been around in Europe for a while but is new to the U.S. also stood out to me. It's called Keiko. They have very fresh Japanese green teas, some taste matcha candies, and the coolest teamaker I have ever seen. The machine grinds the leaves on the spot, then whips them into a perfectly foamed matcha, matcha latte, matcha soy latte, matcha with OJ, matcha colada, or just about whatever other kind of matcha-based drink you might want. Very fresh. Very cool. (Their site's not in English, but you can still see their teas and their crazy matcha machine.)

Over the next week or so, I'll be posting more about the Expo that I didn't get to cover before. Check back for more!

World Tea Expo: Products and People

The exhibit hall is full of two main things: products and people. Most of the people are great. Some of the products are great. Here's a shortlist of the booths I skipped and the booths I'll be back to see again tomorrow (or, in other words, my person best and worst of show).

I skipped anything involving country-home-style products, faeries/wings/glitter, children, instant teas (especially the tea that comes in a spoon with a filter over the end--you stir it in hot water to brew it . . . I can't even begin to tell you how disturbing I find this product to be), cold-water-brewed iced teas, and MOST of the bottled teas. Other people may love these things, but they are decidedly NOT for me.

The booths that I loved and will be back to see again tomorrow include (though I'm sure I'm missing some) Art of Tea, Bodum, ITI, Ito En, Keiko, Red and Green Company, Rishi, and Tao of Tea. I know I missing most of the teaware people and I'm pretty sure I'm leaving some other worthwhile companies out, but I'll go back and list the for you later. In the meantime, these are the ones that I felt the most excited about. I'll tell you more about each company over the next few weeks--they have a lot of things going for them! If you get the chance, check out their sites!

I desperately need a nap, so it's off to the hostel to take one! After my nap, I'm going to a southern-style tearoom to get my fried food and sweet tea fix for the trip. (It is impossible for Southern expatriates to visit the South without eating at least one fried food and drinking at least one glass of "Southern table wine.") I can hardly wait!