Tea Artisans Tap Creativity to Craft the Best Teas
The places where tea and creativity intersect occur beyond the brain, where tea’s botanicals collaborate with brain circuitry and chemistry to yield sparks. While that zone of engagement serves as a playground for creativity, another one also invites people to explore creativity and tea: the crafting zone.
People who make tea, including farmers, processors and blenders, deliver deep draughts of creative juice to their work. Farmers might play with shade to help produce different flavors—this is especially prominent in Japan. Post-harvest artisans sometimes introduce smoke to tea, or fermentation techniques. Flowers, too.
Those who blend teas for a living, or just for fun, also engage intently with imagination.
Chai crafting just one style of tea artisanship
For example, the world supports hundreds of different chais, each of them the result of an artisan’s creative vision. Other blends tap the healing power of plants to bring about vitality and vigor. Still more leverage the many flavors found in plants—most of the flavors in the world, that is—to produce unique teas that nearly vibrate with taste.
Let’s dive deep into some of the many ways in which people have harnessed creativity to gift the world with a wealth of spectacular beverages.
Creativity and Tea: Lapsang Souchong
The story goes that this famous tea resulted in the 17th century when occupying soldiers in Tongmu Village in the Wuyi Mountains finally left the region, after taking over a tea factory. When villagers reentered the factory, they had to quickly dry the harvested tea leaves, which were poised to spoil.
Thinking fast, and creatively, they made a fire using pine logs and halted oxidation of the leaves over the warm smoke.
The result, of course, was a decidedly smoky tea. A ruined batch? No—in fact the tea became a local favorite, then a popular export worldwide. It was one of the first black teas exported to the West; prior to Lapsang Souchong, most exports were green teas.
Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ranked as one of the tea’s fans, pairing it with cigars and whiskey. It’s popular today, too, with the British Royal Family.
And the entire Ku Cha House of Tea family adores this smoky, malty, delicious nectar too!
Creativity and Tea: Bi Tan Piao Xue
Meaning “Snow flakes falling upon a jade pond,” this exquisite jasmine green tea represents the finest of its kind in the marketplace. And the quality rests on more than the superb quality of the tea itself—it also hinges on the creativity behind the blend. To make this, artisans harvest tiny, silver-lined tea buds from tea bushes and then mix them with tender jasmine blossoms. The process is not industrial and uniform—different harvests of both plants every season compel farmers to adjust proportions of the botanicals. Differences, too, persuade blenders to leverage different techniques to get the most out of each blend. The base tea comes from Mountain Meng, one of the most ancient tea mountains in China. Soothing and sweet, this is our highest quality jasmine green tea.
Creativity and Tea: Firefly Chai
Chai presents bold flavors, elixirs of spices, herbs and other botanicals that together yield memorable teas. And making these blends demands creativity on the part of its manufacturers. Would a little bit more clove better balance the vanilla? Is the nutmeg too pronounced? Would a whisper of turmeric improve the final product? Questions like this confront chai makers every day. This house-blended chai—yes, we are the creative engines here!—presents profound depth, with flavors of vanilla and cardamom in perfect harmony with the excellent black tea. Our Firefly Chai will stimulate your taste buds like fireflies lighting up a night sky—all while leaving a sweet linger to the palate. Ingredients include ginger root, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, vanilla and nutmeg.
Creativity and Tea: Bounce Back Herbal Tea Blend
Coming up with blends sometimes involves more than just flavor and texture. While that always matters, with some teas health benefits also play a role in the drafting of formulas. Our Bounce Back tea, with ginger, cinnamon, nettles, strawberry leave and oolong, delivers wallops of outstanding flavor, along with health advantages. Drink this beauty when your knees are sore! And if you live in Colorado, this is a common ailment. All of the mountain sports tax our knees. This blend also bolsters bones, reduces internal inflammation, smooths out digestion and boost metabolism.
