You can tell that tea is one of our favorite ingredients because we have several ice cream flavors in the book infused with it. Tea is an excellent flavoring agent: flavorful, elegant, sophisticated.
One of the oldest beverages we drink, tea is only second to water in popularity! There’s such a wealth of history behind tea’s prevalence and cultural influences, we could write pages and pages about it. But we don’t want to put you to sleep!
It is commonly believed that tea drinking originated in southern China where the country borders Myanmar (formerly Burma). From there, it quickly spread throughout China and was introduced to the Portuguese through trade. In the seventeenth century, tea gained a following in England, and it was the English who eventually introduced tea to India, where it quickly became popular.
The teas most commonly found on the market are white, green, oolong, and black, with many other less popular varieties in existence. An evergreen plant, most of the world’s tea is grown in Asia; however, some teas are grown as far north as Cornwall in the United Kingdom. Tea leaves are extremely sensitive to moisture and odors and easily absorb their flavor, which means you must store tea in a cool, dark place in a well-sealed container.
Recently, tea has been enjoying a resurgence as a health beverage. It’s been credited with helping to lower blood pressure and decreasing the risk of certain cancers thanks to compounds called catechins, present in all tea leaves and found in the highest concentration in white and green varieties.
Some high-end tea is packaged in premade bags (muslin, silk, and the like), but most bagged tea is of lower quality; the manufacturer likely uses tea fannings, or “dust” produced from the sorting of higher quality tea. Generally speaking, you can guarantee better quality tea if you buy it loose, and as an additional benefit, loose tea leaves also allow you to control how much tea to use.
We love quality tea and sell it in our shops as well as using it in our ice cream, which we think is an excellent conduit of flavor. From Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream, one of our all-time best sellers and a classic, to Masala Chai with Black Peppercorns, to Genmaicha with Honey, tea adds a delicate, elegant flavor to our recipes.
In our search for a tea company we liked across the board, we found a tea company that deals in organic and fair-trade-certified teas, the Wisconsin-based Rishi. Once we tried their Earl Grey tea, flavored with real bergamot oil (not bergamot flavoring as is, sadly, all too common!), we were hooked. If you take a look at (and a whiff of) loose Rishi tea, you will immediately notice its large leaves and elegant fragrance. It’s a bit more expensive than the competition, but once you brew yourself a cup, or make some ice cream that includes their tea, you’ll agree with us—that incredible taste is worth a few extra dollars.