A Tea Blending Life

It’s a Mixing World Here

I think some tea purists would shudder at my love of tea blending. And I understand.

I understand that there are some teas that need to be enjoyed on their own, without additions. I love the simple elegance of a rare Kumaon tea from the Himalayas, sipped from beautiful china.

And I also love the humble kitchen-garden herbs of rural America that bloom anywhere, sometimes in the most unwelcoming conditions. I love their healing, nurturing qualities, and the simplicity of an herbal tisane in a pottery mug, sipped at an old kitchen table. I love the way they live and play together in the garden. I love how some herbs release the medicinal qualities of another herb, or brighten its flavor.

I’m not an isolationist. I love both worlds and I mix both worlds, blending the teas I love with the herbs I love.

Teas are just like people. When our beautiful differences can shine unashamed by each other, we all bring life and nourishment to the world in a beautiful togetherness that doesn’t ask us to become like others are, but lets us each live in our own authentic way.

Tea Medicine

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage, wrote Kakuzo Okakura in The Book of Tea. To me, and to many others, it is both medicine and beverage.

I have a deep interest in whole-body healing, specifically the Ayurvedic approach of nourishing the body holistically. All of these herbs and teas, these gifts from the Earth, play a wonderful part in nourishing body, mind, and spirit. And sometimes, they come together into something that feels extra-special. The tea blends I’ve developed focus on this synergy. For example, one of my favorite blends combines green tea with the energy of Yerba mate and holy basil, and is flavored with lavender, orange peel, and ginger mint. For a morning blend, I add gingko biloba, roasted chicory root, red rooibos, and a bit of spice to an Assam tea base. And there is nothing like a heart-soothing blend of red rooibos, elderberry, hawthorn, rose petals and rose hips. Hawthorn for the heart, warmed with herbs the color of red, just like the heart itself.

All things return to soul through water.

Steven Eisenstadt

Tea or Tisane? What’s the difference?

I often refer to my blends as herbal tea blends, but they don’t all contain tea. All tea comes from the Camellia sinensis plant, generally grown in tropical locations. This is the source of all green, black, white, and oolong teas. All these teas contain some caffeine. 

Tisanes, on the other hand, are steeped with herbs, flowers, roots, spices, and fruits. They contain no caffeine, and hold many different healing qualities. Think chamomile flowers and echinacea root and mint leaves. 

I organically grow any herbs I can at my home in the eastern US. I have several varieties of mint, along with chamomile, calendula, lemon balm, sweet marjoram, echinacea, and black currants. I use a mix of dehydrator-drying and the old-fashioned drying method of hanging bunches of herbs upside down. It depends on the herb, and how fragile its flavor and scent is. Any teas, and other ingredients I don’t grow, I source from Mountain Rose Herbs or other organic sources.

For flavoring, I prefer to use fruits, flowers, and nuts to enhance the tasting notes. Orange peel and ginger root that have been dried myself are some of my favorites. The flavor is incomparable to generic store-bought spices.

A Few Favorite Ingredients

Mayan Mint is a naturally sweet herb I started from heirloom seeds. It’s not actually a mint, but a relative of the verbena family. I love to use it for its gentle sweetness. It’s more subtle than stevia, though I do use stevia leaf at times.

Rooibos is an herb from South Africa, and is my go-to choice for caffeine-free blends. Rooibos is high in antioxidants and vitamins, is anti inflammatory, and is good for the immune system, digestion and skin. Its gentle, relaxing properties are also good for encouraging restful sleep.

Oatstraw is a favorite inclusion in any of my relaxing blends. It nourishes and gently restores tired bodies. Oatstraw contains minerals like calcium and magnesium, which makes it wonderful to add to calming, sleep-inducing blends. St. Hildegard of Bingen called it one of her “happiness herbs.”

Lemon balm is a simple favorite. Because of its lovely light lemon scent of course, and then because of this quote from Culpepper: “Lemon balm causeth the mind and heart to become merry, and drives away all troublesome cares and thoughts.”

How can I not love that?

I’m always looking to expand my herb gardens and try different varieties of herbs, using heirloom seeds when I can. And I share more about my tea-growing and tea-blending process on my Instagram page, so feel free to follow along there if you like.

Perhaps someday I’ll sell a few of my favorite tea blends. For now, that’s just not in the cards. So I stick to my mad-scientist method of kitchen experiments, and bequeath them as gifts to hapless friends.

But between you and me, there is nothing like drinking a cup of tea that you have just picked from your own garden. And almost anyone can grow a little herbal tea garden. I love to see people doing that more than anything, and that’s my hope with all the tea-wisdom I search out and share.

Tea has a way of softening us, making us vulnerable and receptive, writes Frank Hadley Murphy in The Spirit of Tea. If we take the time and continue to sit quietly in our chairs, savoring the taste and the moment, we may remember not only where we mislaid our spectacles but also where we have mislaid our dreams.

Here’s to The Tea Life. Cheers!