Love-Filled Decaf Teas for Valentine’s Day
For those who skip winter sports, February doesn’t have a lot going for it. The thrill of the holidays is long past. New Year’s resolutions to exercise, improve our diets, engage in daily meditation or yoga and other good-for-us pursuits have started to topple, at least for many of us. The days remain short, cold persists, and the first appearance of crocus and green leaves on trees won’t happen for more than a month.
On the other hand, February contains Valentine’s Day. And this, love’s only holiday, gleams like a shimmering ruby in a nest of gray velvet. If Valentine’s Day took place in nearly any other month, its sparkle might be a bit dimmed.
The holiday finds roots in Christianity; its official name is Saint Valentine’s Day, and it began as a Christian feast day honoring a Christian martyr named Valentine. But its association with love is a bit more complex. As if often the case with Christian holidays, they also rest on pagan foundations.
Ancient Romans honored something called Lupercalia from February 13-15. The rite, connected to purification and health, honored the pagan gods of love, marriage and fertility: Pan and Juno. Back then, love didn’t figure into the celebrations, although fertility played a minor role.
Fast-forward to the 14th century in England, and poet Geoffrey Chaucer made the first connection between the Feast of Saint Valentine and romantic love, in his poem Parliament of Fowls.
Valentine’s Day and Tea
Now, 600 years later, people around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day, from the United States to France to Argentina, South Korea and many more. In the Philippines, it is the most common day for wedding anniversaries.
Here at Ku Cha, we think love is a powerful force indeed. We embrace its holiday with such ardor that we have decorated all of our stores in Valentine’s themes. Expect to encounter many shades of red!
Tea, of course, figures into our celebrations. We recently explored caffeine, and how the plant compound’s prevalence varies between beverages, such as coffee, yerba mate and tea, as well as between different teas. Now, with Valentine’s Day just 12 days away, we look closely at decaffeinated teas. Between the pounding hearts and the chocolates, Valentine’s Day already offers people much in the way of stimulation!
For all of Ku Cha’s decaf teas, artisans use C02 to strip caffeine, a natural plant compound, from the plant matter. In essence, the extraction process isolates the compound and vaporizes is, which liberates it from the leaves. Other methods rely upon toxic solvents like butane and hexane to remove caffeine. While these approaches work, and of course remnants of the solvents are removed before the tea gets packaged and sold, we prefer rejecting them altogether.
As we draw closer to the holiday, consider picking up some beautiful tea for a loved one from Ku Cha. No other beverage offers as much choice and variety as tea; there’s something lovely for everyone.
Decaffeinated Teas for Valentine’s Day: Decaffeinated Jasmine
In addition to chocolates, heart-shaped cards and candlelit dinners, Valentine’s Day also features flowers in abundance, often red roses. Many teas incorporate flowers, including chrysanthemum, lavender and, yes, rose petals. But jasmine stands as the most iconic blossom that gets included into blends of traditional tea. People in China have been harvesting jasmine blossoms at night (which is when they bloom) and folding them into piles of just-harvested tea for centuries.
Our decaffeinated jasmine tea offers enchanting floral notes that soothe and relax, leaving sippers feeling centered after just one cup. The tea is rich, sweet and extremely satisfying. If you thought decaf teas might taste wan compared to their zippy cousins, then this tea will set you straight!
Decaffeinated Teas for Valentine’s Day: Sweet Heart Blend (Organic)
Roses and Valentine’s Day go together like two people deep into a long hug. They are inextricable. To that end, we suggest our organic Sweet Heart Blend, a positively delicious tea that brews into a dazzling red with a rich, vibrant taste and floral aroma; its bounty of rosebuds contributes toward the tea’s color, winning flavor and perfume, and health properties.
In China, practitioners of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) use Sweet Heart’s herbs — hibiscus, peppermint, licorice and rosebud — to aid digestion, promote a healthy heart, refine internal balance and help ripen internal beauty. In other words, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. The flavor intoxicates with its beauty. With their perfume, the rosebuds help conjure romance. And the whole package fortifies and enriches health.
Decaffeinated Teas for Valentine’s Day: Pink Pomegranate Fruit Tea
More red? Of course! It’s for Valentine’s Day. This beauty doesn’t contain roses, but the pomegranate, pineapple, apple, dragon fruit, hibiscus and yogurt crunch make our super-popular Pink Pomegranate Fruit tea sweet, in a healthy way. And when it comes to love’s holiday, sweets figure into the celebrations.
Pro tip: If you have kids and plan to decorate their Valentine’s Day with little treats, we can report, from experience, that the little ones, and even the bigger little ones, LOVE this bright red tea, both hot and chilled.
Pamper the kids with this tea, and they’ll start asking for it over and over again. As the sweetness comes entirely from fruit, it’s healthy, too!
