Cultivating Cozy Across the (Persistent) Cold Seasons with Tea
The tease is on. Step outside on a random afternoon, and it may be 61 degrees in sunny. The next day? Snow, and 28. In between these late-February poles come loads of afternoons in the 40s and 50s, often with clouds and some kind of precipitation.
Call it cozy weather. And it lasts for much longer than February, at least here in Colorado. We often get days of rain and cold in March and April. Sometimes the chilly, wet gloom persists into May.
Climatic conditions aligning with spring weather in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, or Scotland, compel us into wool sweaters and slippers. They force us to buy more wood for the fireplace—the cord we had delivered back in October didn’t quite make it to the cold season’s finale. And the gray gloom also inspires us to brew pot after pot of tea. Cradling the warm mugs thaws our bodies, and sipping the elixirs awakens and comforts our minds.
All teas have the potential to offer cozy comforts. But we think some deliver the goods with more oomph than others. Looking for heart-stoking teas to get you through the next few months of 2024? We’ve identified a handful that we think you’ll find especially bewitching when clouds turn the sky into shades of pewter, temperatures keep us swaddled in cardigans and walking across parking lots threatens to turn our socks soggy.
Teas for Being Cozy: Alpine Chai
We think chai captures the essence of cozy better than just about any other product in the world—and that includes hot cocoa and shortbread. We so love chai that we carry 10 different styles.
Some chais lean into heat from ingredients like cayenne pepper. Others offer up as many as a dozen different spices and herbs. Our Alpine Chai keeps it simple—and triumphs because of its straightforward approach. Classic Keemun Monkey black tea from China serves as the base of this splendid chai. To that we add cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove and nutmeg. The result—especially with a lashing of a dairy or plant milk—is pure chai gorgeousness. Balanced, smooth and nuanced with those nutmeg notes.
With chai like this, you might desire cozy weather year-round.
Teas for Being Cozy: Firefly Chai
This magnificent chai doesn’t stray from classic baking spice flavors—and it’s the better for it. The addition of ginger up the heat, without the sometimes challenging effects of chile peppers. Unique cardamom punches up the blend’s flavor atmospherics. And the vanilla rounds out the entire brew, cloaking everything in a deep loveliness that persuades us to keep on brewing and sipping it.
Teas for Being Cozy: Milk Oolong
We often associate drinks with creamy textures—consider hot cocoa, for example—with coziness. There’s something about the way the drinks’ velvet sultriness coats our tongues and warms our throats that seems especially powerful when weather fails to cooperate with desires for flip-flops.
This explains, in part, the love our customers have for our dairy-free Milk Oolong. This entirely novel oolong gets steamed with a non-dairy creamer before tea artisans roast the leaves and arrest oxidation. The result? A tea bright with oolong flavors, but also creamy and exquisitely satisfying. It is one of our most popular flavored oolongs.
Brew a pot of this sensory joy and sink into a comfortable chair with a good book while sleet pelts the windows. You’re welcome.
Teas for Being Cozy: Vanilla Rooibos
Some people reject caffeine altogether for its effects. For them, caffeine leads to scattered thoughts, shaky hands and an unpleasant jitteriness. Others are fine with a little in the morning and early afternoon, but stop sipping long before it’s time to turn off the lights for the night.
Either way, caffeine for many people is not a morning until night pursuit. Yet when the weather turns cold and gray, desire for cozy-sparking beverages flourishes.
Regardless of people’s relationships with caffeine, they’ll always desire cozy-stoking teas during the tempestuous months. That’s where rooibos comes in. This tea, from a South African shrub that is widely brewed and sipped in the country, offers rich, earth flavor and a wallop of healthy electrolytes—without caffeine.
We adore our Vanilla Rooibos, one of 14 that we carry at Ku Cha House of Tea. With rooibos, calendula flower petals, almond slivers and vanilla, this blend incorporates earthy, floral, nutty and fruity flavors into one beverage. It’s perfect for post-prandial sipping. And as it contains no caffeine, it carries no threat of those post-sipping shakes and anxiousness.
Teas for Being Cozy: Toasted Almond
As Ku Cha is based in Colorado, we’ve probably experimented with every tea in our 200+ inventory that offers even a smidgen of potential for complementing cold weather. Our Toasted Almond tea’s facility for lifting moods on gray days didn’t surprise us. But what does sometimes amaze us is our desire to return to this tea again and again during chilly, gloomy weather.
It’s quite simple: almonds, and pieces of apple, cinnamon and beetroot. No tea leaves—no Camellia sinensis, no yerba mate, no rooibos—to serve as the tea’s base. Only one spice, cinnamon. But the play of warm cinnamon with real apple and the kicker—toasted almonds—appeals to us immensely when we desire little more than a blanket on our lap and a show to binge. The nuttiness from the almonds makes this one extra special.
