Making Wine from Tea?

Here's an article I recently wrote for The English Tea Store blog.

Making Wine from Tea?
By William I. Lengeman III

This is not the first time I’ve written about tea and alcohol and, more specifically, about those alcoholic beverages made or flavored with tea. Here’s a link to one of my most recent such articles, which has to do with beer and related beverages made with tea. Here’s a general look at various tea-related spirits and whatnot. On the flip side, an article on the connection between tea and temperance.

To the best of my recall, however, I haven’t run across much information on wines made with tea – until recently, that is...

read the full article here

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Sweet Green Tea Vodka

Phillips Distilling Company Introduces UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka
(from a press release)

UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka is the only sweet tea vodka blended with natural green teas. Steeped in the rich coast-to-coast tradition of sweet teas, UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka is the sophisticated sweet tea choice for cocktail enthusiasts.

Not your typical sunporch tea, UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka is infused with a distinctive green tea flavor. This sweet green tea flavored vodka blends the Zen-like qualities of green teas with a modern sweet tea twist.

Beautiful inside and out, UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka is infused with green tea leaves sourced from global locations. Capturing the taste, aroma, and colors of these natural ingredients, UV exudes a hint of citrus and tropical fruits. Such flavors yield a divine, honey-green vodka presented in UV Vodka's award-winning bottle design. Like all UV Vodkas, UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka is distilled four times and carbon filtered to assure purity and the perfect pH balance.

UV Sweet Green Tea Vodka is the 12th variety of flavored vodka within the popular UV Vodka brand. Other flavors include coconut, cherry, blue raspberry, vanilla, grape, apple, citruv, orange and lemonade.

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Plaza Citrus Tea-zer Recipe

As summer heats up in Boston, Pairings Restauarant is now offering two new tea infused cocktails: the Plaza Citrus Tea-zer and theJasmine Tea Sangria. These refreshing tea cocktails, created by in-house Tea Sommilier Cynthia Gold, are available now through the end of the summer on the Pairings’ patio for $12 a piece.

Makes 1
11/2 ounces Green Tea-Coconut Rum
3 ounces grapefruit juice
1/2 ounce Green Tea-zer Simple Syrup
Splash Champagne
Lemon twist for garnish (optional)
Basil leaf for garnish (optional)
Shake the rum, grapefruit juice, and syrup vigorously in a cocktail shaker with ice. Strain into a chilled martini glass. Finish with a splash of Champagne and garnish with the lemon twist or a fresh basil leaf.


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Tea Review 99 - MateVeza Organic Yerba Mate IPA

MateVeza
Organic Yerba Mate IPA

Beer, ale and whatnot - it's a world that's far removed from tea and one that I'm not very familiar with. While I like the taste of all of the aforementioned, I mostly steer clear of them because alcohol makes me feel sluggish.

What I'm getting at is that I may not be the best person to weigh on in on the merits of Mateveza's Organic Yerba Mate IPA. Then again, I know what I like and I like this yerba mate-flavored ale rather well. If you're keen on frosty beverages with a nice touch of the bitters - courtesy of that yerba mate, I'd wager - you might want to look into this one.

Here's the press release for the product and here's a review I wrote of another of their yerba mate ales a while back.

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Great Lakes Brewery Green Tea Ale

If you like your tea with a little kick - or if you like your kick with a little tea, for that matter - Great Lakes Brewery may have just the thing for you. It's their Green Tea Ale. Read more about it at the Canadian Beer News or A Good Beer Blog. Or check out the accompanying video review.

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Tea Martinis

Tea and alcohol - they go together like, well, like tea and alcohol. It's a mix that's becoming popular enough nowadays that here at TGS we have an entire category devoted to it.

If you're keen to try a tea martini anytime soon, check out David's Tea Martini Kit, which comes with North African Mint, Kashmir Chai, Raspberry Nectar, Earl Grey and Lime Bang teas, among other things.

For more information on the tea martini, try the Tea Martinis page at Mahalo.

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Sweet Tea Vodka, Tea Robot & Coca Tea Woes

Sweet tea is a variation on iced tea that's pretty much an institution in the southern United States. So it probably wasn't that much of a stretch for the South Carolina-based Firefly Distillery to come up with a vodka flavored with sweet tea. Check out their Web site here, as well as this article from a local paper. For more on tea and spirits, refer to these other TGS posts.

For whatever reason, it seems that a high percentage of robot makers like to "teach" their creations to serve tea. Exhibit G - this blurb about a bag of bolts named Basil. More on tea and robots here.

If you're getting ready to relax with a nice cup of mate de coca, beware. For all the particulars, refer to this cautionary tale from a Jacksonville paper.

Image: Firefly Distillery

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tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Green Tea Vodka

For those who like their green tea to pack a little wallop, Napa Valley-based Charbay Winery and Distillery offers Charbay Green Tea Vodka.

The vodka, which was several years in the making, uses extractions of four tea varieties from China's Anhwei province. It joins Blood Orange, Ruby Red Grapefruit, Meyer Lemon, Red Raspberry and Pomegranate, a line of flavored vodkas the family-owned winery and micro-distillery began making in 1998.

The company notes that this is the first green tea vodka produced in the United States (which implies that perhaps there are others being made offshore). One of their recommendations for using the product is a China Grill Green Tea Martini. It mixes 1.5 oz Charbay Green Tea, 1.5 oz freshly brewed green tea, 1.5 oz unfiltered cloudy sake and a splash of simple syrup.

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tea, green tea, food, food and drink

Tea Wine

I've written enough times in these pages about the intersection between alcohol and tea that the site has a category devoted to this topic. Check out some of the other pieces here.

Calcutta's Telegraph recently reported about an effort taking place at India's Tocklai Experimental Station to make wine from tea. It's one of many initiatives that the station is working on to raise the profile and marketability of tea.

The article is a bit sparse on details, but you can check it out here.

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Tea Review 83 - Mateveza Yerba Mate Ale

Mateveza Yerba Mate Ale
Mateveza LLC

I've mentioned Mateveza a few times now. Recently the good people who make it were kind enough to send me a bottle.

Mateveza is made with yerba mate. If you scout around here at the site you'll find that I've written about it a good bit. I don't drink beer much these days but I discovered yerba mate a few years back and developed quite a taste for it.

Along with the sample of Mateveza, I also received a small amount of the yerba mate used to make it. It was good, but I suspect that I'm not quite enough of a connoisseur to make much of a distinction between different yerba mate varieties.

As for Mateveza, I have to admit that I wasn't sure what to expect. But I was pleasantly surprised. What I found most interesting about the product was that there were two very distinct flavors happening at the same time - the sweetness of the ale and the bitterness of the yerba mate.

Which worked quite well, in my opinion. The two tastes offset each other nicely. If you're not a fan of yerba mate - and it can be an acquired taste - you may not agree. But it's certainly worth a try.

Recommended.

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tea, green tea, food, food and drink, yerba mate, beer, ale

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Yerba Mate Ale & T Bars

Can't decide whether to have yerba mate or beer? You're in luck. As we mentioned before, Mateveza Yerba Maté Ale is a new product that combines both. The product and its creator were profiled recently at SFist.

If we're to believe the gang at Food Processing magazine, T Bar Green Tea Nutrition Bars are nothing to write home about. The vegan-friendly bars are available in three flavors — Green Tea, Natural Rice and Tropical Fruit - but the reviewers tasked with evaluating them were quite unimpressed.

How unimpressed? How about "I once ate a paperback novel that tasted like this.” Now, that's not very nice, is it?

Image: Tzu The

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, yerba mate, beer, T Bar

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Yerba Mate Beer & More

It seems that yerba mate is all the rage these days. So it was probably only a matter of time before someone came up with yerba mate beer. That someone would be Butte Creek Brewing Company, who, in concert with Mateveza USA, have devised a brew called Mateveza Yerba Mate Ale.

As the manufacturer puts it, Mateveza Yerba Mate Ale is "an organic, naturally caffeinated pale ale brewed with yerba mate, the ancient tea from South America."

Butte Creek Brewing Company is based in Chico, California. Mateveza Yerba Mate Ale will be available initially on draft and in 22-ounce bottles throughout California and Oregon. Retailers will include Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and more.

The Web site is here, though it looks kind of sparse at the moment.

In other yerba mate news, be sure to check out the new Happy Gaucho site. It's a production of the gang over at Natural Latitudes, who got me started on "proper" yerba mate consumption.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, Mateveza, yerba mate, beer

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Book Review - What to Drink With What You Eat

If you're looking for the lowdown on food and beverage pairings, you'd probably do well to check out What to Drink with What You Eat, by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. It's billed as "The Definitive Guide to Pairing Food with Wine, Beer, Spirits, Coffee, Tea - Even Water - Based on Expert Advice from America's Best Sommeliers."

If you're going to buy the book solely for the advice on pairing food and tea, I'd caution you to look at a copy first. While it contains some excellent advice about tea pairings, as well as the other beverages mentioned, wine is really the primary focus of the book.

To read my full review of What to Drink With What You Eat, at Epicurean.com, click here.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, wine, food pairing

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Tea Review 75 - Voyant Chai Cream

Voyant Chai Cream Liqueur

If you like the taste of chai tea but you find yourself longing for something with a little more muscle, Voyant Chai Cream Liqueur might be just what the doctor ordered.

Voyant, which bills itself as "the original chai cream liqueur," is a mix of "Aged Virgin Island Rum, Fresh Dutch Cream, Black Tea from India, Premium Spirits from Holland and a Distinctive Blend of Spices."

Since I first mentioned this product a while back, I've had a chance to sample it. I should say that I'm not much of a tippler these days and I've always been impervious to the charms of chai. With that in mind, I've got to admit that I found Voyant Chai Cream surprisingly tasty.

I didn't catch too much of the tea flavor, but that's not surprising, given the nature of the other ingredients. The creaminess was appealing and the chai component didn't overpower the other elements, which was a big plus for me.

Voyant Chai Cream also gets points for the eye-catching design of its bottle. I'm not much for knick-knacks, but I was tempted to keep one on hand just for decoration.

More about Voyant Chai Cream at their Web site. For cocktail and food recipes that use the product, visit the Voyant Creations section.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, chai

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Tea With A Kick & More

Here are a few miscellaneous items to get your Monday underway.

The New York Times writes about tea again - that's three substantial articles in about the last week. Tea With a Little Kick appeared Friday. It's a look at that place where tea and alcohol meet. I've written a few brief posts on this very same topic. Here's the most recent one.

Here's an article in the British press about a chain of tea shops set to open over in that part of the world. Ringtons is expected to open as many as 100 tea and coffee shops in the UK, apparently within the next ten years.

Speaking of tea and coffee shops, there's one called Starbucks - you may have heard of them. Perhaps you've also heard that they're raising the prices of their beverages. AP reports that "prices of its lattes, cappuccinos, drip coffee and other drinks" will go up by about a nickel.

Last up is a site I ran across the other day for Bouteaque, who bill themselves as a merchant of "tea-inspired bath & body products."

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, Starbucks

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Green Tea Beer

For some fanciers of liquid refreshment, it would be the best of both worlds - beer and green tea. It's a topic that we've written about before, though I don't know if iKi Bier - from the Netherlands - is made with green tea or black and I don't know how readily available it is in this part of the world.

Something that should be more readily available hereabouts is BluCreek Brewing's Zen IPA beer, which takes an India Pale Ale and flavors it with green tea. It debuts some time in August, according to a recent piece at Themilwaukeechannel.com.

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, beer, Zen

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Vodka & Yerba Mate

We've written about several combinations of tea and vodka thus far. Here's a link to one of those pieces.

Now here comes Zygo Vodka, which combines vodka with yerba mate, among other things, to make a spirit that's supposed to energize you at the same time it's making you tipsy. Now what do you make of that?

Anyway, here's a piece on Zygo from the Boston Globe and here's the link to the company's flashy Web site with mucho bells and whistles. Which is all well and good unless you're actually trying to find some info.

Image: Zygo

tea, green tea, food, food and drink, vodka, energy drinks, yerba mate

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Vodka Recipes & Rooibos Recipes

Some time back I wrote about a green tea-flavored vodka from Charbay Winery and Distillery. While nosing around at their Web site recently, I ran across a page that list recipes for three cocktails made using this particular spirit. There's the Angèle Green Tea Cooler, the Charbay Green Teani and the Mochi Cocktail.

Over at Simpson & Vail's Web site, they have an iced tea recipe that uses vodka and Rooibos, or redbush, an herbal "tea" from South Africa. Also at their Rooibos recipes page are various recipes for drinks, cocktails, desserts, soups and main dishes. Rooibos Fudge, anyone?

tea, food, food and drink, Rooibos, vodka, recipes

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Tea & Gin

Thus far we've reported on several distillers who make vodka flavored with various types of tea. Our most recent article on the topic is located here.

If you were waiting for gin to take its turn in the spotlight, then you shouldn't have to wait much longer. Business Week recently reported that House Spirits, an Oregon-based maker of the hard stuff, will soon feature a gin that uses Darjeeling tea, among other things, as an ingredient.

GBT Winter Gin is expected to roll out some time in autumn. It's a blend of Darjeeling tea, toasted carob, nutmeg, fenugreek, cranberries, and coriander and is expected to sell for somewhere between $35 and $40 per bottle.

Link

tea, food, food and drink, vodka, gin

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