The Frothy Green St. Patty's Tea Cocktail

For some, tea is an incredible alternative to alcohol. For others, it’s simply an enjoyable drink. The latter of those two types of tea-drinkers often find they also enjoy tea cocktails, a flavorful mix of tea and alcohol.

There are many ways tea and alcohol can be combined to form sophisticated, complex tea cocktails. The most common method is to simply blend tea, alcohol and a mixer. Somewhat more complex methods include making a tea-infused liqueur or a tea-infused simple syrup before building the beverage itself.

A fun, simple and colorful method of making tea cocktails is to whisk matcha into an alcoholic drink. For a Saint Patrick’s Day cocktail, a bright green color is desirable, so I decided to go with this last method in coming up with a tea cocktail recipe to share with you here. It’s easy, tasty, energizing and a lot healthier than a Red Bull and vodka or an artificially colored beer. Check it out:

Saint Patrick’s Day Red & Green Ale

Ingredients:
1 bottle Irish Red Ale with a bitter-sweet balance to it, like O’Hara’s, Smithwick’s, Diamond Bear or Goose Island Kilgubbin
1/4 teaspoon Samovar Organic Matcha, plus more for garnish

Rim a chilled beer glass with matcha (optional). In a small bowl, whisk 1 Tbsp beer and 1/4 tsp matcha until fully blended and very frothy. Pour the beer into the glass. Top with matcha-beer foam. Garnish with a dusting of matcha powder (optional). Serve immediately.

Matcha is traditionally paired with Japanese sweets called wagashi. This tea cocktail is a bit too bold for delicate wagashi, but it pairs well with Irish “tea brack,” also known as “barm brack,” a lightly sweet raisin bread/cake that’s traditionally served at Halloween and baked with surprises mixed in, like you would see in a Mardi Gras cake.

If you make your barm brack (pronounced “barn brack”) at home, be sure to use a good, strong black tea in the recipe, like Ancient Gold or Samovar Breakfast Blend, or brew Yunnan Golden Bud with extra leaves for a rich, sweet taste that echoes the raisins in the bread. (Side note: All three of these teas come from Yunnan, China, as did most early “Irish Breakfast” blends.)

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

-Lindsey Goodwin

Lindsey “Vee” Goodwin is a professional tea writer and consultant. She founded Vee Tea, is a contributing editor to World Tea News, writes for non-industry publications about tea and writes web copy/press releases for tea companies. She is also a consultant to several tea companies and teaches about tea through staff training and individual/small group classes and tastings. Click here to reach her by email.  .

Green tea is currently one of the biggest trends in food today, loaded with antioxidants and other essential health benefits. Unlike coffee, it’s “gently stimulating,” allowing you to feel energized without feeling jittery. Ryokucha Green Tea from San Francisco’s Samovar Tea Lounge raises the bar for how a green tea should taste. One of their featured teas, it includes toasted brown rice  imported from Japan. When infused with wok-fired green tea leaves, the result is a rich, earthy flavor that is irresistible when paired with sushi, other Japanese cuisine, or even a morning bagel. It’s made in-house at the Samovar Tea Lounge, which also sells and serves organic, fair trade tea and tea service. In addition, they also offer breakfast, brunch, lunch, high tea and dinner.

According to Samovar, Ryokucha is a converter, meant to convert non-tea drinkers into devoted followers, and it definitely delivers. As opposed to the overwhelming grass flavor of many green teas, the roasted brown rice provides a nutty flavor, making it a cut above the rest. As the St Patrick’s Day season approaches, celebrate with a tea in keeping with the theme and color of the holiday season.

Price: $16 for a 4.5 oz tin.

Get your own Ryokucha here.

Media Contact:
Jesse Cutler, Samovar: (415) 655-3431 / publicity@jpcutlermedia.com

First Comes Yoga, then Comes Dinner and a Movie

This week, I’m all about dinner and a movie at Yerba Buena.  I definitely watch what I eat.  I like to know that careful attention is paid not only to where the food is sourced from but how it is prepared.

So, when the Yerba Buena location opened, my movie nights came back at the Metreon’s theater because most of the food at the Metreon is just too quick, too loud and too who knows what, when, where and how.  I also enjoy a small jolt of caffeine if I am going to a movie at night.

A green tea is just right for me on those evenings.  I don’t like to rush through my meal and absolutely love to sit and slack for a while after eating.  It makes such a difference to be sitting in a movie after eating and continue the nourishing sensations of food tasting great on the tongue and feeling good in the belly and knowing it won’t disturb my sleep later on that evening.

Also, I have had the opportunity to experience Samovar, Yerba Buena during weekdays.  It is so clear that there was a need for a space to be created where folks could step back, relax and enjoy each other’s company in the midst of the hustle and bustle that is downtown San Francisco.  One day, I was attending a Caroline Myss conference and we only had one hour for lunch and a ten minute walk on either side but I knew that the Samovar oasis was what I needed.  As is with the other locations, the staff took great care of us and it was a busy day and the weather was amazing so we sat outside.

So, if you’re looking for healthy choices, a relaxing atmosphere at lunch, take a few extra minutes for yourself.  It will help your office mates for you to come back from lunch more relaxed and rejuvenated too.  But more important if you’re looking for a great place to have dinner and then head over to a movie, Samovar Yerba Buena is the spot.  Take your friends/family – tell your friends/family.

Namaste.

-Les

If you’d like to get more information about Les, you can go to www.yogawithles.com

SAN FRANCISCO — In a city saturated with coffeehouses, a state awash in lattes and a nation deeply in love with a cup of joe, they have come for tea. With their heads bent over stainless steel tins of leaves at the Lupicia Fresh Tea boutique here, they sniff chocolate mint black and inhale blueberry-raspberry green. They come for tea because of beneficial flavonoids, exotic flavors and the elegance of an Asian ceramic teapot. They are top-of-the-line tea drinkers, and in a Starbucks world, their numbers are increasing.

A coffee man in the morning, accountant Roy Wong wants nothing but green tea in the afternoon, and when it comes to green tea, he wants nothing but the best. Hence his pilgrimage to the Japanese-owned Lupicia, which offers 200 varieties of black, green, oolong and white teas.

“I’ve read that green tea helps prevent Alzheimer’s and helps with digestion, so why not?” Wong said.

Tea in America once meant a bag of Lipton floating in a cup. Green tea was a fringe product and white tea unheard of. All of this has changed, including the shape of the lowly tea bag, as U.S. tea sales are expected to grow to $10 billion by 2010 from $6 billion in 2005, according to the World Tea Expo, a trade show.

Driven by reports that tea has less caffeine than coffee, is loaded with antioxidants and may even help prevent tooth decay and Alzheimer’s disease, Americans are guzzling ever-increasing quantities of chilled, bottled tea. Premium loose-leaf teas also are surging in popularity, packaged in bulk or in silken, oversized tea pouches, which enable the leaves to unfurl.

Nationally, the number of tea cafes has boomed to 2,000 from 200 in the past decade, according to the Tea Association of the USA. California has the most, with the coffee-loving Midwest trailing. “The Midwest has always been a laggard when it comes to tea consumption,” said Joe Simrany, president of the Tea Association of the USA.

The TeaGuide, which maintains a list of tearooms worldwide in conjunction with the Cat-Tea Corner Web site, catteacorner.com, reports that there are 33 tea cafes in Chicago and 18 in the suburbs.

What’s in your tea bag

Just as wine, coffee and chocolate transformed from foodstuffs into gourmet pursuits, tea drinking has become a province of connoisseurs. Education is at the core of the transformation. The idea is that once
you’ve tasted high-end single-estate-grown Assam black tea, that cup of Tetley won’t be as appealing.

Take this bit of education from Kalvin Louis, co-owner of the Samovar Tea Lounge, a San Francisco Asian-themed food and tea salon. Traditional tea bags, Louis said, contain nothing more than discarded tea leftovers known as fannings, dust, soot or shake. As tea is processed, whole leaves are shaken in a mesh basket. What falls through is bagged.

“They color it and flavor it,” said Louis disdainfully as he sipped a cup of Ancient Tree hand-picked green tea.

The tea experience comes in two forms. In sync with the pace of American culture are bottled chilled teas, tea smoothies, sparkling tea mixed with fruit juice and bubble tea drinks–a Taiwanese specialty characterized by pearls of gummy tapioca at the bottom of the cup that are sucked up through a wide straw.

On the hot side, loose-leaf sellers such as L’Amyx Tea Bar in Oakland are selling the idea that pausing to steep a pot of tea is a calming respite from a hectic world. To this end, L’Amyx doesn’t sell take-out cups of tea.

But do Americans want to slow down?

“It’s an uphill battle with American culture,” said Marcia Lam, chief financial officer at L’Amyx, as she stood behind the bar, pouring tea made from delicate white buds. Just as yoga and spas have emerged as a way to find balance, so too has tea, she said.

Making the switch

In Chicago, even the pressure of law school can’t make Chrystina Zelaskiewicz, 26, drink a cup of coffee. On winter nights, she favors Fruit Blast herbal tea at Argo Tea on Rush Street.

“It’s hot, it tastes good and it doesn’t have caffeine,” she said. Herbal teas aren’t technically teas because they aren’t from the Camellia plant that is the source of all teas, but they’re steeped like tea and also are growing in popularity.

“I like the flavored teas,” said Chicago medical school student Bonnie Hoel, 25, who recently sipped a cup of Ginger Peach black at Argo Tea. When she’s at home, she’s partial to the milky cinnamon sweetness of chai black, which she pairs with homemade banana chocolate chip bread. She’s also acquired a taste for green tea. “It’s a little bitter, but I’ve heard about the health benefits of it,” she said.

Behind most tea drinkers is a conversion experience–the day they put down their java and picked up some oolong.

“I just realized how much better I felt when I drank tea,” said Dominic Martello, 55, a waiter who once drank four or five cups of coffee a day. “It’s easier on the stomach,” he said, sipping Jasmine Pearl green tea. Just as relaxing as drinking tea: the slow-paced tea house ambiance, he said.

“It’s a place to think about what I want to think about.”

Media Contact:
Jesse Cutler, Samovar: (415) 655-3431 / publicity@jpcutlermedia.com

Social drinking? Love it.

Except sometimes. Like the time you told your boyfriend’s mom about your penchant for prescription pills. Or when you hit on your boss at the holiday party.

But it was the night you publicly peed on yourself that really caused a stir.

In your case, you’d best hightail it to Samovar Tea Lounge for some mood-boosting, booze-free libations.

Owner Jesse Jacobs promises a warm, happy glow after an hour or so of sipping and yapping over fine artisanal

teas at the new Tuesday tastings. And he won’t turn his nose up when you can’t tell the difference between Oolong and green.

What he will do is introduce you to the mind-expanding world of tea varietals (Maiden’s Ecstasy Pu-erh, anyone?). The experience includes an informative dose of Tea 101 along with the tea tender’s choice of three different teas, selected for their uniqueness, taste, and

seasonality — all for just ten dollars.

And to keep the good feeling flowing, Samovar’s tea comes from small family farms across the world. So relax, drink, and be merry.

Just not too merry.

Samovar Tea Lounge, 498 Sanchez Street, at 18th Street (415-626-4700 or samovartea.com); Tuesday tea tastings are by appointment only.

Media Contact:
Jesse Cutler, Samovar: (415) 655-3431 / publicity@jpcutlermedia.com

Ambassador Erick

When Erick isn’t helping lead the staff at Samovar, he’s working out. A fitness freak, being healthy is important to him. Erick is actually 45 years old (not really…). What’s his secret? Vinyasa yoga with Les as Yoga Tree. Lots of it.

Erick has a passion for simplicity, communication, Japanese green teas, yoga and meditation retreats, tasting and analyzing tea, and he’s generally good at almost anything that involves movement. He loves doing tea tastings, and balancing three pots of tea simultaneously on his forearms on busy days.

One of the many of his favorite teas include the Wuyi Oolong.

“It’s relaxing and uplifting, and helps me get ready for a busy day because it’s very adaptable,” he says. It can be strong or light– easy to brew intense and roasty, or light and sweet.

On his free time, or when he has some free time, Erick loves to read books on leadership, mindfulness, and communication. On cold days, he loves listening to Krishna Das, while reading “The Mindful Leader,” and enjoying a cup of Ryokucha.

“Ryokucha is the best breakfast tea. It is full bodied, has a little caffeine from the green tea, but has an amazing grassiness from the organic matcha that we blend it in. The roasted brown rice kernels make it a little sweet. I love this tea paired with a salmon maki bowl.”

Erick loves his green teas!

Get Norwood’s Temperature Variable Tea Kettle.

Creamy, full bodied, matcha infused, malty, smooth & sweet, and with a mildly grassy finish. That’s Ryokucha, our special house-blended staple, and the ingredients are fresh from Japan.

This tea has a very complex taste, but a very simple effect: It feels good!

Ryokucha green tea is so popular because it’s easy to brew, tastes so pleasing, and is perfect for drinking all day long. Like a meal for breakfast, a pick-me-up midday, and a cozy soother for the evening, this tea has been a staff and customer favorite since we opened.

Ryokucha is Samovar’s version of Genmaicha, the beloved traditional toasted rice green tea, but ours has a twist! Click here to find out more about Ryokucha.