Lavender lovers unite!

The Tea Spot has just released a brand new blend just for you. As a “lavender lady” myself, I have fallen completely head over heels for this month’s Tea SpotLight- our Lady Lavender.

Lady Lavender has one foot firmly planted in the Earl Grey blend we have come to know and love, and the other in something completely new. We’ve taken a classic Earl Grey black tea with bergamot base and embellished with lavender, vanilla, orange peel, and other citruses. This unique twist is soothing and uplifting all at once, is lovely hot and exceedingly refreshing iced!

The health benefits of black tea are numerous and include- anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-oxidant, and anti-aging properties. As always, our loose leaf tea is completely calorie-free, fat free, and gluten free so you can indulge without a care. And to sweeten the deal, lavender flower tea infusions are well known for relieving headaches and stress.

For best steeping practice infuse one teaspoon of leaves per eight ounces of boiling water for 3-5 minutes. Happy Sipping!

Lady Lavender Steeping

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.

As the newest member of the Tea Spot team, I’ve been given the opportunity to post some ‘behind the scenes’ information about what it’s like working at this unique loose leaf tea company located in Boulder, CO. My first month has been non-stop action, and I am excited to share some insider tips with you!

Some things you might not know about the Tea Spot: for starters, we literally sit around drinking tea all day long, on large bouncy exercise balls nonetheless! This familiarity with tea adds up to a whole slew of tea knowledge and experience among the staff. I have been trying one new tea per day and have discovered a few teas that have completely rocked my world (more to come on that later!). We also sample a tea each week during our team meetings and sit around talking about the tea itself, its tea family, tea history, and on and on. The first thing that becomes apparent as a new employee at the Tea Spot is just how knowledgeable and passionate these folks are about… you guessed it, tea!

Tea Time from our Tea 101

 Part of our new-employee training program includes studying up on our Tea 101 book, which we’ll include here just for you! This is a fantastic introduction to loose leaf tea, brewing guidelines, tea history, and tea types. You can check it out here:

Link to the Tea 101 book

While there is no shortage of things to learn about tea, I am happy to report that the whole process can be quite enjoyable if you incorporate tea tasting into the learning process. Recently a fellow employee, Joice Li and I tasted all of the teas mentioned in Tea 101 side-by-side. This list includes:

• Black Tea & Pu’erh: Bolder Breakfast and Mango Tango
• Green Tea: Green Roasted Mint (now Thin Mint Green) and Boulder Blues
• White Tea: Meditative Mind and Monkey-Picked White
• Herbal Tea: Red Rocks and Chamomile

From left to right, Katie, Teas from Tea 101, and Joice!

After this side-by-side taste test, we dedicated one day to each tea category and sampled the two teas listed there together. All these teas are so flavorful and unique, a must try for everyone from tea fanatics to newbie’s and everything in-between!  

My personal picks so far:

1)    For Earl Grey fans, ours is not to be missed!

2)    Favorite iced tea: Mango Tango

3)    Best nightcap tea: Red Rocks with delicious hints of vanilla and almond