Assam black tea - photo credit: The Tea Spot

So the saying goes, about “the strong one” – Assam tea is the one many of us wake up to. This brisk black tea is blended into English and Irish breakfast teas, and more than 400 different single estate Assams are available from this most prolific of all tea regions in the world.

Assam valley - photo credit: doniv

Everything about this tea is big – even the leaf. The larger leaves produce a darker and stronger tea, which makes it stand up well to milk and sugar. Local people love to drink spicy masala chai (brewed sweet tea with milk and spices) using Assam loose tea leaves. Amongst black teas, you can always pick out Assam by its distinctive malty aroma and honey finish to the taste. Even though it’s a very strong tea, Assam is velvety smooth.

The varietal of tea plant that comes from Assam is Camellia sinensis assamica, and its leaves are about twice as big as the Chinese varietal Camellia sinensis sinensis. Assam is one of only two regions in the world with native tea plants (along with Southern China). This very wet Himalayan valley extends over 500 miles along the Brahmaputra river. It gets 80 – 120 inches of rainfall annually, and parts of it look like a tropical jungle. Assam is home to the largest wildlife sanctuary in India, where you can still see the one-horned Indian Rhinoceros and the Asiatic Elephant.

One-horned Rhino - photo credit: Lip Kee

Assam tea steeps up into a beautiful dark liquor. Adding milk to the tea turns it to a characteristically ruby-amber hue.

The way to make a traditional English cuppa would be to put one teaspoon of loose leaf tea per cup into a warmed teapot. Fill the teapot with freshly boiled water and stir a few seconds with a tall spoon to “elevate” the tea. Let the tea steep for 3-5 minutes. The tea will get stronger and more bitter the longer it steeps. Many Britons add milk to their tea, a habit which began when tea was thought to be bad for your health. Milk was added, in an attempt to make it healthier. “Builders’ Tea” was inspired by British builders who would not work on a house without tea breaks as a way of structuring a hard day’s work. They prefer strong, smooth and mellow tea, like Assam, and drink it with milk and sugar. Builder’s Tea goes especially well with digestive biscuits, making for a hearty snack.

TAGS: Afternoon Tea, assam, assam tea, black tea, breakfast tea, loose tea
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This month, The Tea Spot “SpotLight” is on our Jasmine Pearls Green Tea. This delectably floral green tea is an absolute treat at any time of the day, and has been my afternoon “go to” for the last few weeks. Let’s take a quick timeout today to talk about what makes this tea so unique! Our Jasmine Pearls hail from the Fujian region in China. They are hand-picked in the Spring, layered/scented multiple times with jasmine petals, and are then expertly shaped into pearl form.

Pretty pile of our Jasmine Pearls

This pearl form is a truly unique twist on loose leaf tea. Tightly rolled, when steeped in water, these pearls slowly unfurl and can actually get better and better with each additional infusion.

Our Jasmine Pearls start out in pearl form (left), and after the first infusion the two leaves and leaf bud that compose the pearl can be clearly seen (right).

Pearls Before and After First Infusion

While preparing this spotlight, I was able to take one teaspoon of Jasmine Pearls and make four 8 ounce cups of tea in one day! With this tea, you really can get “bang for your buck” with the potential for so many delicious re-infusions! Just remember when re-steeping tea in this way, you want to add about 30 seconds of steeping time with each additional infusion.

The brew and leaves after one infusion

Best steeping practices- use one teaspoon per 8 ounces of water, steep 2-3 minutes with water that is 175° F (bring water to a boil and let cool three minutes).

Enjoy!

Jasmine Pearls is featured here with our Steeping Cup!

TAGS: Jasmine Pearls, Jasmine Tea
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Tea geek alert! Warning: tea sommelier attempts ahead. If you have some of our black teas, play along!

The most nuanced differences in our loose tea collection is found in our straight black teas, in my opinion. While darjeeling has very distinct muscatel notes and lapsang souchong is heavy on the smoky notes, I have to admit that I get a little fuzzy in being able to describe, in words, the distinct characteristics of our other blacks, even after working here nearly 5 years. (I’m not proud to admit this!)

So… for fun, and to once-and-for-all learn the nuanced differences of our traditional black teas we set up a blind tasting in the office today. That’s when one person steeps up a set of teas of undisclosed types and presents them to the rest of the group to sample, essentially “blind”. I even went so far as to hide the wet leaves, which can give huge clues to what’s steeped up based on the size, shape, & color of the leaf. We then began to sample the unknown teas, aka teas #1-5, which included: Assam (India), Nilgiri (India), Keemun (China), Yunnan (China), & Ceylon (Sri Lanka) – in no particular order ;)

Before we attempted to assign names to the brews, we gathered adjectives for each cup from our little tea tasting team and ranked everyone’s favs. Then everyone guessed which tea was in each cup, as I practiced my best poker face. After revealing who got them right, Maria our CEO was the clear winner – no shocker there, she knows her teas!

To extend this guessing game to our readers. Browse our descriptions of each tea below (listed from top to bottom in the photo above) then guess which of our straight black teas is described – a kind of  virtual blind-tasting. If you have some of these black teas to cup along side, add your own adjectives and rankings in the comments section. (Scroll to the bottom of the post to see our answers).

TAGS: assam, ceylon, keemun, nilgiri, straight black tea, traditional teas, yunnan
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This post begins a new segment- “The Tea SpotLight” where we put one of our premium loose leaf teas front and center for the month. We tell you why we love this tea, what it can do for you, along with the ideal way(s) to prepare and enjoy it. After years of waitressing at various restaurants, I appreciate the value in asking your server what their favorite dishes on the menu are. Servers know their menu inside and out, and because they usually eat the restaurants food during every shift, they know what’s really good. This is precisely our inspiration behind The Tea SpotLight segment of our blog… we’ll tell you what teas we love, and more importantly, why we love them. Perhaps this will inspire you to try something new, or make a current favorite that much better!

As The Tea Spots Customer Service Rep, I’m often asked what my favorite tea is. (As a side note: it is impossible to answer that question with just one tea. It’s like asking me to pick just one favorite flavor of ice cream, or one favorite pair of shoes. The joy is in the variety!) But, I do have flavored and unflavored favorites in each tea category, and am always more than happy to ‘break it down’ for anyone interested.

To start things off I’m going to delve right into my personal favorite flavored herbal tea: our Blood Orange Smoothie.

In my house, it has been affectionately dubbed “The Boss”, quite simply, because we think it’s the best. Blood Orange Smoothie is a caffeine-free red rooibos based tea from South Africa. We’ve loaded it up with all the goods- orange peel, apples, hibiscus, rosehips, safflowers, rose petals, and vanilla and citrus flavors. These ingredients combine to make a naturally sweet, refreshing cuppa that reminds many happy sippers of an orange creamsicle. “The Boss” is delicious hot, and is also incredibly refreshing when served over ice.

To make Blood Orange Smoothie, add 1 teaspoon of tea per 8 ounces of water, and steep for at least six minutes with boiling water. You cannot over-steep this delicious tea, the more steep time the better!

The health benefits associated with red Rooibos tea are numerous. Rooibos contains copper, iron, potassium, calcium, fluoride, zinc, manganese, alpha-hydroxy (for healthy skin) and magnesium (for the nervous system). It is naturally caffeine free, and as such, is perfect before bed and is a very popular choice among kids. According to studies conducted in South Africa and Japan, Rooibos has been shown to aid in health problems such as insomnia, irritability, headaches, nervous tension, and hypertension. In South Africa, Rooibos has been used to treat allergies such as hay fever, asthma and eczema very effectively. Rooibos contains antioxidants which can help slow the aging process and boost the immune system.*

I hope you’re ready to try Blood Orange Smoothie now! You can find it on our site here, in a sample size, ¼ pound, and 1 pound bags. Now if you’ll excuse me, all this talk about “The Boss” has made me thirsty…

Cheers!

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food & Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.

TAGS: Blood Orange Smoothie, Herbal Loose Leaf Tea, Rooibos Loos Leaf Tea
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