In honor of multiple Tea Spotter’s who have recently tied the knot, we created a custom tea blend called White Wedding. Sipping this dessert tea is like indulging in a slice of decadent white wedding cake… without the calories! It’s also offered in mini tins great for gifting to wedding guests and/or bridal shower guests.

White Wedding tea by The Tea Spot!

Given our hearty passion for tea, we love the idea of incorporating a tea bar into a wedding plan! Wedding pro and our lovely guest blogger Natalie with Simply Bridal agrees, and is passing on these fantastic ideas just for us!

I can’t survive a day without coffee or tea, and I can only imagine that when my wedding comes rolling around, I’ll need a little extra help.  While many couples have coffee (with a tea option) at the end of the wedding, for others it can play a more central role.

For early weddings, coffee can be a welcome pick-me-up before the ceremony or in addition to appetizers. A selection of teas and coffees can even replace the customary bar in the downtime between the ceremony and reception.

Much like the recently trendy dessert bar, coffee and tea bars can be as playful or colourful as you want. For coffee snobs, you can hire one or two baristas to make coffee and espresso drinks.

Martha Stewart Tea Boxes

If possible, it’s a great idea to pair your coffee and tea with dessert. Many people enjoy a tea or coffee with their wedding cake. More robust desserts or cakes like pecan pie and chocolate cake need drinks with equally strong flavors. Lighter cakes can be paired with delicate and floral drinks.

Martha Stewart Tea Cups

When planning a wedding, most couples fail to consider this option because the usual price constraints inevitably begin to occur and they have to start compromising. Yet, these tea and coffee bars, can be nicely decorative and relatively inexpensive.

I would suggest a variety of tea blends and of course a few different types of coffee. About four tea blends is a nice number, which will keep the guests happy. Make sure to include the common traditional and green tea as most guests will be happy with these and maybe include a few unusual flavours for those more adventurous guests.

At the end of the day, it is a small, inexpensive option that can keep your wedding reception buzzing for that little bit longer.

Loose Leaf Teas

For Tea Spot readers, anytime between now and April 30th enjoy 15% off any purchase with Simply Bridal using the code SBL116TS!

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If you’re in NYC and looking for a quick fix of British, before you book that weekend discount ticket to London, see first if a quick trip to New York’s West Village can satisfy your thirst for an authentic “cuppa”.

Walking into ‘Tea & Sympathy’ on Greenwich Street will make for a total escape from Manhattan. The intimate setting with tables and benches set close together combined with customers’ friendly banter combined with the aroma of home-cooked food and tea will make you revisit your accent when the waitress welcomes you. The menu is all English – from Welsh Rarebit and Shepherd’s Pie, to Sticky Toffee Pudding. It’s a perfect place to decompress and make new friends. After a visit to ‘Tea & Sympathy’, you’ll see that Britannia’s addiction to tea… is not just about the tea.

Next door, ‘Carry on Tea & Sympathy’ has English tea everything. Here you’ll find teapots, PG Tip, biscuits, and even tea tins with red double decker buses and a staff that you’ll want to keep coming back to.

Adjacent restaurant ‘A Salt & Battery’ offers all kinds of fried fish and seafood: haddock, sole and shrimp, as well as yummy chips, onion rings and battered veggies. No tea for dinner here, the Boddington’s and Strongbow Cider pair perfectly with the fried indulgences.

PS: Don’t leave without trying the fried Mars bars!

TAGS: English Tea, New York City, tea
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With so many varieties of loose leaf tea to choose from, it’s hard to choose what to drink sometimes, but I’ve been on a real green tea kick. Lately I’ve been enjoying our new Mao Jian Jade Tips tea, a beautiful organic single-estate Chinese green that is uniquely vegetal and buttery, and is delicious hot or cold. Green tea is tasty and nutritious, and comes in many varieties, but it can sometimes be fickle to prepare correctly. We sometimes hear complaints from customers here at The Tea Spot that their green tea is too bitter and unpleasant tasting. The first piece of advice that we give them is to check the temperature of their water.

The beautiful Mao Jian Jade Tips

Because green tea is so delicate, the recommended temperature for brewing it is 175 degrees. If you don’t have a temperature-specific tea kettle, we recommend boiling your cup of water and then waiting three minutes for it to cool to approximately 175 degrees. We decided to test our advice and try brewing our Organic Sencha three ways: with boiling water, 175 degree water, and cold-brewed using the Steep and Go.

We brewed the two hot teas for 2 minutes, and right away we could see a difference in the color of the brew. The tea prepared with boiling water was a dark yellow, and the tea prepared with 175 degree water was a lighter, brighter yellow. We let the cold brew tea infuse for about 20 minutes before tasting it, and it had the lightest color of all.

Sencha made with boiling water on the left, and made with 175 degree water on the right.

The important difference, however, was in the taste of the teas. The tea brewed with the optimum temperature of 175 degrees was slightly sweet and grassy, and balanced perfectly with a slight saltiness that is typical in a Sencha. It was a delicious and perfectly rounded flavor. The tea made with boiling water was noticeably more bitter than the other one, and the bitterness overpowered the sweet grassy flavors. It also seemed to take on a more roasted flavor, detracting from vegetal notes of the tea. Because we are at such a high elevation in Boulder, CO, water boils at around 205 degrees, and I suspect the flavor differences would be even more noticeable at the sea level boiling temperature of 212 degrees.

The tea brewed in the Steep and Go was light and refreshing, and the sweetness really came out of the background. It was a very refreshing afternoon treat, and a great way to enjoy any green tea! This experiment was a good reminder that the advice that we give to customers is sound: using the correct temperature of water makes a better cuppa, and a better tea drinking experience!

Sencha cold-brewed using the Steep and Go