Valentine’s Teas Celebrate Hearts & Ravishing Flavors
Valentine’s Day is nearly upon us, and we look forward to love’s only celebration with keen anticipation. Last year’s Valentine’s Day marked the last time many of us took part in a national holiday without fear of masks, social distancing or vaccines. Just weeks after Valentine’s Day the curtain fell for most of us.
The curtain remains. This year’s embrace of hearts, alas, will not be as carefree as years’ past.
But that’s not going to stop us from celebrating the big day. Given all that we have endured during the past year, isn’t it about time we championed love with extra enthusiasm? That we hug the people in our COVID-free pods with a bit extra oomph? As Valentine’s Day falls on Sunday this, we endorse an entire weekend of the holiday.
A different kind of Valentine’s Day
Booking restaurant reservations stands as a Valentine’s Day tradition for many. Given diminished seating in restaurants, chances are most of us won’t savor the pleasures of fine dining on February 14.
Instead, we support local restaurants by ordering Valentine’s Day meals — many are geared up for the big day. We splurge on beautiful wine; with the forecast calling for seasonal Front Range weather (mid-40s, sunny) we envision a pleasing Cabernet Franc from a Colorado producer, or maybe an Oregon Pinot Noir or Pinot Blanc.
Some of us will cook. We say yes to homemade fettuccine with shrimp in a cream sauce, to roast chicken with rosemary potatoes, to fennel gratin and flourless chocolate cake.
And of course we brew and sip lots of beautiful tea.
Most teas offer profound heart-health benefits. Many also just sing for Valentine’s Day because of their flavor profile, their cheeriness, their anticipation of glorious spring.
In addition to the Valentine’s Day whole-leaf teas discussed individually below, we also offer a Valentine Sample pack, which includes our Valentine’s Blend, Sakura Cherry Blossom, Pink Pomegranate, Organic Sweet Heart, Choco Pear Green, and Vanilla Rooibos tea, all of them in tidy tins.
Another gift idea? Our Valentine’s Blend in a decorative, pink canister, one you will want to keep after you have brewed the Valentine’s Blend.
Happy Valentine’s Day, friends! May you spend every moment of it basking in the warmth of loved ones.
Valentine’s Tea: Spring in Paris
The name of this tea conjures pleasant notions, doesn’t it? While we won’t find ourselves strolling down the Champs-Élysées this spring, we will enjoy “baie rose,” a floral and peppery berry from South America that is popular in France. This pretty black tea offers these pink peppercorns, the dried berry of the Peruvian peppertree, in abundance. It also includes freeze-dried strawberries; we find that freeze-drying preserves delicate flavors better than other preservation techniques.
As they say in Paris, Joyeuse saint Valentin!
Valentine’s Tea: Sakura Cherry Blossom
Here comes another tea with a smile-sparking name, and one that causes us to year for the return of travel to our lives. The sakura, or cherry blossom, is the most elegant and atmospheric Japanese symbol. Not only is the Japanese cherry tree (Prunus serrulata) the country’s national tree, the tree’s blossom, the sakura, is its national flower.
We dream of visiting Yoshino, a city about 300 miles southwest of Tokyo, during cherry blossom season. The city is famous for its abundance of trees; pink blossoms literally blanket landscapes during the height of the season.
This tea captures the season’s drama with Japanese green tea, hibiscus, pink rose petals and of course, pieces of cherry. The combination somehow delivers us straight to spring. When we use our imaginations, we dream of Yoshino while we sip.
Valentine’s Tea: Pink Pomegranate
It’s such a marvel, the pomegranate. A pink softball packed with bright seeds swollen with sweet juice. One pomegranate provides a wealth of flavor-rich capsules, each of which presents a burst of musky, honeyed liquid.
The Greeks championed the fruit as the symbol of love. One of their myths identified pomegranate as the fruit planted by Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. Others embrace pomegranates for the abundance they represent — so many delicious gifts in each leathery globe!
This tea, with pomegranate, pineapple, apple, dragon fruit, hibiscus and a little yogurt crunch (trust us — it is splendid), brews Valentine’s Day pink. The caffeine-free treat is comforting any time of the day. Kids love it, too.
Valentine’s Tea: Organic Sweet Heart
Hearts dwell at the center of Valentine’s Day. We craft them from colored paper, and give them to loved ones. We buy heart-shaped boxes full of chocolates. Little heart-shaped candies emblazoned with happy messages arrive on kitchen tables and children’s desks.
And when we sip our Organic Sweet Heart tea, we are enjoying a blend involving ingredients long-used in Chinese medicine to promote healthy hearts, as well as aid digestion, help bring about internal balance and bring forth natural beauty.
The delicious blend relies on hibiscus, peppermint, licorice and rosebud for its health-giving powers, and its exquisite flavor. It also involves a pinch of sweet stevia, which is a powder derived from the leaf of the stevia plant; nature’s best non-fruit sweetener.
Valentine’s Tea: Valentine’s Blend
A Valentine’s Day tea? At Ku Cha House of Tea, you bet. We craft custom teas for many holidays and seasons. We aren’t about to forget about love’s only celebration!
Two traditional Camellia sinensis teas serve as foundations for our Valentine’s Blend: black and tea, and oolong. Both offer heart benefits, and robust flavors, that we desired for this tea. In addition, we incorporate mango, strawberry, those pink pepper-like fruits (baie rose) that we discussed in our Spring in Paris tea description, rose petals and a berry native to Colorado and much of the West: chokeberry.
The bright fruit in this gem balance the combination of traditional teas. The pink “peppercorns” offer a jolt of spice, the rose petals perfume the tea with floral aromas and the chokeberry balances everything with a touch of sour. It’s a beautiful tea.
Choco Pear Green
No proper Valentine’s Day celebration is complete without chocolate. And while chocolatiers pair their favorite substance with many different fruits, we find the chocolate-pear combination especially divine.
For this rich tea — perfect for dessert, even though it doesn’t contain sweetener — we combine herbal green tea with cocoa, ginger and pear. All of the flavors pop on their own; in concert, they explode. In a good way.
Shanghai Dreams
We do dream of Shanghai. If you have ever been, we trust you this cosmopolitan, modern city appears now and again in your dreams as well. Shanghai, China’s most populous city (24.3 million people!), is a booming port city — the Port of Shanghai is the world’s busiest shipping container port. It also is sort of like the New York or Paris of China, complete with historical landmarks, myriad cultural attractions, the Bund — a waterfront promenade flanked by historic buildings — and a dizzying contemporary skyline lined with skyscrapers.
The city serves as a global center for finance, research, technology, transportation and manufacturing.
Shanghai Dreams reflects the city’s diversity, excitement and charms. The tea incorporates apple, hibiscus, rose hip, elderberries, beet root, rose petals, blackberry leaves, freeze-dried sour cherry pieces and vanilla bean into a thrilling blend. This is not a dull tea! And it might make you dream of Shanghai.
China Rose
Shanghai Dreams revolves around the idea of a modern, dynamic and busy city. China Rose, on the other hand, reflects older, traditional China, where simplicity reigns.
It’s simple: black tea and rose petals.
And just as the most plain things — a perfect tea mug, for example — sometimes elicit the greatest pleasures, so it is with China Rose tea. The black tea offers a strong backbone. The rose petals meet the strong tea with delicacy and perfume. Together, the match is perfect.
