From Tropical Beaches to Alpine Peaks to City Streets — Travel the World with Tea
If we could squeeze it all in this summer—there’s also the paying for it complication, too!—we’d spend a spell lounging and frolicking on a Fiji beach. Pina coladas might decorate part of the day.
We’d also trek beside fjords in glorious Norway, and enjoy waterfront lodging in grand log cabins, where we would devour berries and savor smoked herring and sip the local akvavit.
More? Of course! Bogota, here we come for days of wandering historic neighborhoods saturated with colonial charm, noshing on luscious and obscure (to us) fruits like grenadilla, feijoa and pitahaya and spending time in the city’s celebrated Gold Museum.
Alas, this does not describe our summer. If it at least approximates yours—cheers to you, and well done.
Like most of you, though, our summer does involve summer vacations. Flip-flops might get sandy. Legs might grow sore from climbing trails, even as hearts expand as we drink in long vistas and listen to hummingbirds zip around wildflower meadows. Al fresco meals on city sidewalks after pleasing afternoons of enjoying air-conditioned museum exhibits will surely figure into the summer of 2025.
Still—we dream of globetrotting. And since we can’t get it done in person this summer, we’ll turn to tea. It won’t transport us to a Pacific island, but sipping it might at least get us in a tropical frame of mind.
Vacation Teas: Passionfruit Oolong
If you’ve never heard of Florianópolis, we’re here to tell you this island off the coast of Brazil is famously gorgeous—lauded for its pristine beaches, azure waters and laid-back lifestyle. It’s also bustling—it serves as the capital of southern Brazil’s Santa Catarina state.
We plug this beautiful spot because passionfruit is native to Brazil and a few other South American countries. And it stars, of course, in our Passionfruit Oolong tea. With a base of heavily oxidized oolong, this tea screams tropics with passionfruit and mango. It also contains aronia berries, which are native to the Midwestern U.S.—not remotely tropical, but yummy! You’ll catch floral notes in this beaut as well, from its scattering of rose petals.
Sip this treat, and dream of Florianópolis.
Vacation Teas: Mango Green
The Maldives, an archipelagic country of nearly 1,200 islands about 600 miles south of India, receives a lot of tourism love. The white, soft beaches; the impossibly turquoise water; the resort rooms lifted up on stilts over the water. It’s an Instagram fantasy.
It also supports a lot of mango trees—the fruit is native to India, where farmers have been cultivating them for 5,000 years.
So when you sip our glorious Mango Green tea, the experience might conjure visions of the Maldives.
In addition to green tea and the wonderful flavor of mango, this gem, one of our most popular flavored teas, contains pineapple and mallow petals, which add texture and floral notes to the brew.
Brew this on a hot day, chill it, and drink it from morning to night. Along the way, start researching that Maldives vacation.
Vacation Teas: Aloha Blend
While most Americans have never visited Florianópolis or the Maldives, many have spent time in Hawaii. It is a U.S. state, after all. While it’s widely associated with pineapples, the country also grows a lot of coconuts. And now, it supports cacao, too, the raw ingredient that artisans turn into chocolate.
For this delicious blend, we turned the classic combo of coconut and chocolate into a a tea. This will transport you right back to your favorite beach in Kauai, complete with fish-thick reefs for snorkeling, palm trees waving in the wind and the meditative roar of crashing surf.
Our Aloha Blend begins with black tea. To that we add chocolate chips, cocoa butter, powdered cocoa, white chocolate chips, cacao nibs and coconut flakes.
It’s special—just like Hawaii.
Vacation Teas: Alpine Chai
Missing a mountain trip this summer? As we live in the mountains in Colorado, this is never a problem. But were those mountains to magically disappear—or were we to move to, say, Cincinnati—then we’d miss them sorely. Mountain vacations are among the best. We pursue them year-round, from Durango to Steamboat Springs to Crested Butte—but we engage with most of them in summer, when kids are out of school and the mountains aren’t deep with snow.
This lovely blend of Keemun Monkey black tea, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, clove and nutmeg manages to bring about an ideal balance of flavors. We love it—and it always reminds us of cool, crisp alpine air, even when it’s sweltering outside.
Vacation Teas: Rocky Mountain Breakfast
India’s ecosystems range far, from tropical beaches to dense jungles to Himalayan peaks. The country also supports a vast tea-growing industry, second only to China. And the birthplace of tea, China, also includes a bounty of mountains, particularly in the southern reaches of the nation.
This tea includes a premium Assam black tea from northern India—and not far from Himalayan foothills—and Keemun Monkey black tea from the mountains of China’s Anhui province. Mild climates, plenty of rainfall and cloud-encircled forests describe both places, all of which nurture outstanding tea.
Our Rocky Mountain Breakfast is malty, smooth and strong, with a pleasant, piney fragrance and lingering aftertaste. And the leaves are grown in or beside mountains—that’ll get your mountain vibes humming.
Vacation Teas: Enchanted Forest
Green tea, and green yerba mate. Coconut shreds. Rose petals. Cornflower blossoms. Real cherry flavor. This blend captures the mystery and power of an enchanted forest—the kind you’d love to encounter on any vacation.
It also conjures visions of another kind of forest: Black Forest cherry cake!
Sip this and drift away to your favorite patch of trees.
Vacation Teas: Matcha Latte
Big coffee chains brought lattes to the far reaches of the United States, from rural Wyoming hamlets to small towns in Vermont. But for a long time, most latte love was reserved for city slickers. To this day, when we sip lattes we often get transported to memories of wandering Greenwich Village, or enjoying a picnic in San Francisco’s iconic Alamo Square Park.
When matcha lattes became a thing, our latte love ripened even more—after all, we are tea people! And matcha is one of the perfect teas for a textural, yummy cup of matcha. Not only does it transform a latte into a spectacle of liquid emerald; it also serves as a robust health tonic. As matcha drinkers consume the entire ground-up leaf—rather than just sipping the liquor that emerged from tea leaves soaking in hot water—it offers a wealth of health benefits.
Vacation Teas: Firefly Chai Latte
More city dreaming—and more latte!
We always carry more than 10 chai blends, with many of them blends we came up with ourselves after loads of happy R&D (experimenting with crafting chai blends does not represent a burden). This one offers profound depth, with flavors of vanilla and cardamom dancing in perfect harmony with black tea.
Just as fireflies brighten night, so will this mix of black tea, ginger root, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, vanilla and nutmeg enliven your taste buds. In a similar vein—it might bring to mind a city-scape’s twinkling evening nights.
