Dance the Cha-Cha...Drink the Chai Chai

Maybe some of you are reading about chai tea for the first time. We'll approach the subject as if you were learning the steps to a Latin dance, the cha cha. The first thing an instructor might do is explain how the dance got its name. In the following paragraphs, I will do the same with this increasingly popular drink called chai tea.

Interestingly, chai tea is actually a tautological expression. Simply put, both tea and chai are exactly the same word, only spelled as written in different languages. To differentiate from other types of teas, we will use the term, chai tea, to mean a tea made with four ingredients. Essentially, those are tea, milk, and spices sweetened with either sugar or honey.

What we in the West call chai tea, those in the East call Masala chai. This beverage is extremely popular in southern Asia. In India it is sold in cafés and by street vendors called chai wallahs. These merchants even take their hot tea pots to businesses daily in late morning or mid-afternoon. Along with selling their beverage, chai wallahs also pass along the latest news and gossip.

Now that we know how the "dance" got its name, let's learn some of the steps. Strong black tea is most commonly used in India to make Masala Chai. It is customarily brewed with tea leaves boiled rather than steeped. Westerners have changed some of the "dance" steps. More typically, here chai tea is made from a spice mix.

In India this spice mix is called chai Masala, as opposed to the drink, Masala chai. In learning to cha cha, some of the dance steps may be confusing to learn. In a similar way, the different names and components used to create a chai tea beverage have caused confusion to some.

Okay, now you know how this "dance" got its name and have learned the steps. Now it's time to dance the cha cha and drink the chai. We're guessing no one has seen a chai wallah selling tea in this country, at least not yet. Instead of stopping by a chai stall for news and gossip, we meet friends at coffee shops to visit and chat.

Americans purchase chai teas in places like Barnie's Coffee & Tea Company, Seattle's Best Coffee, or Caribou Coffee Company. At your neighbourhood Starbucks, you may even purchase an iced chai- based drink. This version of their popular Frappuccino drink is made with a coffee-free cream and chai tea concentrate.

You may be wondering about the health benefits of dancing, or as we use the term in this case, of drinking the chai. Masala chai as prepared with strong black tea in the East may have an amount of caffeine equivalent to that in coffee. Perhaps for that reason green chai tea has been marketed as a healthier alternative to drinking coffee.

Chai latte, or chai tea latte, sold in coffee houses is a steamed milk beverage made using a spiced tea mix or concentrated liquid rather than espresso. This allows you to have that second cup of chai without the guilt or the crash that goes with having that extra caffeine in coffee. On the flip side, chai tea drinks sold in many of these establishments may not have the health benefits that come with Masala chai. If the chai tea is not mixed fresh each day, it will not be as potent. Also, as the tea is brewed in southern Asia and India, whole spices are used. For hundreds of years in those cultures a variety of spices have been used to treat or relieve medical symptoms.

Well, dance class is over for today. The instructor has a final note about the drinking of chai tea. Studies about all the possible benefits of chai tea are still open to debate. Most agree, however, that the choice to drink tea is by and large a beneficial one. As is true with dancing the cha cha, one is more likely to reap those benefits by preparing the drink oneself as from watching it from the sidelines.

Now, go enjoy life as you dance the cha cha and drink the chai chai.

"A Tempest in a Teapot" - The Truth About High Tea and Low Tea

For most Americans, High Tea invokes images of a very formal occasion in the late afternoon. Hot tea being poured from an exquisite silver teapot into dainty china cups. Finger sandwiches and lavish desserts served from a 3-tiered platter.

Nothing could be more quintessentially English than High Tea. Just ask a Yank, right? Au contraire! Just ask a Brit. High Tea is nothing of the sort. In England High Tea has always been associated with members of the lower classes, not the elite.

In 1838 “a tempest in a teapot” came into use as an idiom indicating a major fuss over a trivial matter. Some might find this expression apropos when applied to what Yanks and Brits consider High Tea. Lest the topic becomes a source of contention between two allies, a lesson in history would be in order.

The truth is that High Tea (both the name and the time served) has nothing to do with grandeur, status, or formality. In fact, those descriptions would more aptly depict afternoon, or Low Tea (more to come on that later). The difference in the names given each was quite simple. One was a full evening meal taken on a table in the dining room. This table was much higher than the low table on which afternoon tea was served in the sitting room, or parlor. In the following paragraphs, a look back at history will illustrate other distinctions between High Tea and Low Tea.

In the England of yore before the “dawn” of artificial lighting, most people went to bed early in keeping with their biological clocks. During this period two main meals were prepared. The first was early in the morning to break the long fast. Hence, it came to be known as breakfast. The other main meal prepared at the noon hour was called dinner. After their dinner meal, the poor, working class pocketed leftover cheese and bread scraps. Naturally they returned home rather hungry by the end of the day. Unable to afford otherwise, these scraps became their final meal of the day.

As English social order progressed during the time of the Industrial Revolution, a middle class emerged. Along with it, High Tea evolved from its modest beginnings of table scraps. Foods such as cheese, eggs, potatoes, and meat began to appear on the working man’s dining table. Traditional steak and kidney pie or a Shepherd’s pie might have been served at High Tea. This hearty, early evening fare also became known as “Meat Tea.”

A change in meal times also came about for the upper classes. When kerosene oil came to Europe in the early 1800’s, poor lighting was no longer a reason for those of the leisure class to retire to bed early. The later they stayed up at night, the later they slept in the next morning. This change in the time breakfast was served inevitably led to other changes.

The preparation of a large dinner at noon was no longer required, so the meal became skimpier. The most substantial meal of the day was not served until as late as nine in the evening. The time lapse between the two was quite long. Suddenly “jolly ole England” wasn’t so jolly anymore. In fact, by the time four o’clock rolled around, one of the ladies in Queen Victoria’s inner circle began to feel quite faint! With that Anna, Duchess of Bedford, took matters into her own hands. History now credits the Duchess with introducing afternoon tea to the high society of her day in the early 1840’s. It became her habit to invite friends over in the mid-afternoons for tea with butter and bread. Guests were served on low tea tables placed by the sofas and chairs in the sitting room.

Afternoon tea, or Low Tea, became a social occasion. As the trend caught on, each hostess tried to outdo the next. Polite conversations were carried on around tables covered in fine linens. Bone china, a silver tea service, and cake plates on tall pedestals were must-haves.
The “tea party” fare expanded to include dainty sandwiches and pastries which were eaten with three fingers. This necessitated the rinsing of one’s fingers. Bowls of water containing lemon peels or flower petals were placed on the low tables for one’s guests.

By the early 1880’s, Britain’s aristocracy were not the only ones serving Low Tea. Ladies of leisure all across Great Britain began to have ‘At Home’ teas. Eventually tea shops became fashionable, as well. The latter would eventually lead to the formal afternoon tea which Americans mistakenly think of as High Tea.

In a teacup, Low Tea was created by a member of the upper class and was a high-class affair. High Tea owes its beginnings to the lower class.

Mother's Day Tea Gift Ideas

Mother's Day is coming up on May 10, 2009 - it is definitely time to choose that Mother's Day gift right now! Tea is an excellent Mother's Day Gift! It is healthy, it is eco-friendly, it is something she will actually use. Your mom will enjoy some beautiful, healthy tea, teapots, teacups, and tea accessories. These are my top Mothers Day Tea Gift pics. All of them can be delivered to you or your mother, and are eligible for free shipping for orders over $50:

Tea Starter Set includes a dishwasher and microwave safe tea maker and four different loose leaf teas in reusable tins.


Mother's Day Teapots and other lovely gifts

For the bargain shopper, this $9 teapot is a steal - pair it with a tin of tea and you've got a great gift for under $20!

Membership to a Tea of the Month Club, Mom will receive new teas each month to sample for just $20 per month.

Digg this URL grey: Tea is the New Coffee

The following is by Brian X. Chen for Wired.com

The drink of choice for Web 2.0 zillionaires isn’t a quad espresso anymore. It’s a soothingly steeped tea harvested from a shaded mountainside half a world away.

Captains of the internet like Digg’s Kevin Rose and business guru Tim Ferriss (pictured above) are gravitating to the ancient drink, and enterprising retailers are stepping up to fill their every need.

“We’ve had the Red Bulls, coffee and everything else,” Rose says of Digg, which spends about $1,000 a month just on specialty tea for employees. Rose himself favors a cup of Pu-erh imported from China’s Yunnan province after a tough day at the office.

“It’s one of those things where you want to turn to something really natural and from the Earth — and from something that isn’t going to give you a big crash,” Rose told Wired.com. “Once you start consuming tea it makes sense: This is the best of all worlds.”

In Silicon Valley, specialty tea is quickly becoming a phenomenon. Specialty shops, stores and tearooms devoted to the leaf are sprouting up all over the Bay Area. In San Francisco, tea businesses have gone beyond Chinatown and Japantown, spreading to Hayes Valley, the Castro and SOMA.

Tea is the new coffee — the tipple of choice for the Twitteratti. The culture that brought us pizza as a food group and $20,000 coffeemakers has now discovered tea. And its internet-savvy boosters like Rose and Ferriss are leading a movement in the United States to promote the leafy beverage as a trendy drink for new-age geeks who are as obsessed with having energetic bodies as they are with fast computers.

“It’s the new social lubricant,” said Jesse Jacobs, owner of Samovar Tea Lounge, a popular mini-chain of high-end tea rooms in San Francisco. “You’re never hung over and you can never drink too much.”

Rose, Ferriss and Jacobs are hoping to see specialty tea hit the mainstream just like coffee. And it’s certainly possible: Many credit Alfred Peet for single-handedly spearheading the specialty-coffee movement when he opened the first Peet’s Coffee & Tea store in Berkeley in 1966. Starbucks soon followed, and today their coffee shops are omnipresent.

Tea is so ancient that its exact origins are impossible to trace. In one popular Chinese legend, emperor Shen Nung, who drank only boiling water for hygienic precaution, discovered tea by accident 5,000 years ago. According to the tale, some dry leaves fell from a bush into the emperor’s boiling water, and the first cup of tea was created.

Today, fine teas are taking their place in the center of the digital universe. Specialty shops like the Samovar Tea Lounge are virtual emporiums of the beverage, carrying teas from cities, villages and gardens all over the world for guys like Rose and Ferriss, who use it to find respite from their endlessly busy, overly connected lives.

Jacobs, owner of Samovar, which opened three locations in the past year, explained that technology and the internet have changed everything for the tea industry.

“Technology, commerce, shipping methods, storing methods — all these things come together so that today we have access to the best tea ever,” said Jacobs, who has a background in technology himself as a former user interface designer.

He added that the emergence of social networks like Facebook and Twitter are bringing exquisite, obscure teas to the tech-driven world.

Digg founder Rose, for example, who is hailed as one of the most influential people on the web, is playing a large role in bringing obscure teas to the mainstream. He said he quit drinking soda as a New Year’s resolution in 2000, and he turned over a new leaf for tea.

Rose often tweets about new teas he’s trying out to his nearly 400,000 Twitter followers and even created a separate Twitter account — @goodtea — devoted to tea. He also started a Facebook page about the ancient beverage, where he posts videos and information. To top it off, Rose links to Samovar Lounge’s web site on his personal blog, and he plans to make videos with Jacobs showing geeks how to brew loose tea.

Another active member of the tea resurgence is Ferriss, an angel investor and a former owner of a supplements company who became a Silicon Valley star with his bestselling book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.

In the book, Ferriss plays the role of motivator-in-chief, instructing businesses to adhere to one rule of thumb: Cut out all excess information, such as e-mail, Twitter, Flickr and so on. And when something crops up that could potentially stifle productivity, such as a work crisis, hire someone else to deal with it.

So it comes as no surprise that Ferriss, a man who preaches paying more while dealing with less, prefers tea over coffee. He doesn’t want the jitters, the increased anxiety or the bouncy high. He just wants the energy. And he admits that being a tea connoisseur requires spending a bit more than the stuff you’d get in bags. At Samovar, patrons spend anywhere from $10 to $50 each to enjoy a small cup of exquisite tea — such as Mu Za Tie Quan Yin, if they’re feeling extra fancy, which runs for $140 per ounce.

“Tea shots of gyokuro for $50 a thimble full?” Ferriss used as an example. “It ain’t cheap, and it’s certainly not for everyone, but that’s the key: It’s affordably indulgent. A way to show off your insider knowledge instead of distasteful displays of wealth, much of which has been lost.”

How long will it be until you can stroll down a block just about anywhere, sit down and enjoy a cup of Ryokucha imported straight from Japan? Rose is optimistic that the tea renaissance is just five years away.

“There’s a reason tea has been popular for thousands of years,” Rose said. “I have a feeling we’re getting closer and closer to the tipping point.”

Tea FAQ's

Q. Where does the tea we drink come from?

A: Tea is produced today in fifty countries. Most tea comes from China, Sri Lanka and India. However, some is imported from countries such as Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Argentina, Indonesia and Turkey.

Q: Who is the largest producer of tea in the world?

A: China, with over 1,028,000 tons. India is second with at least 956,000 tons.

Q.Who drinks the most tea per capita?

A. The Republic of Ireland followed by Britain.

Q: Just how many of cups of tea do the British drink each day?

A: 165 million cups daily, or 60.2 billion per year.

Q: What about Australia?

A: Quite a lot of tea of tea is consumed in “the land down under.” 15.5 millions cups a year, or 5.7 billion cups a day were drunk in the past year. Put another way, Aussies drank 272 cups of tea per person.

Q: How does the United States rank?

A: Almost half of Americans, over 127 million, drink tea every day. That equates to more than 55 billion of cups per day. More than ¾ of tea consumed by Americans was in the form of iced black tea with the South and Northeast drinking the most.

Q: What is the difference between green tea and black tea?

A. As with all teas, both come from the camellia sinensis plant. The difference comes once tea leaves are plucked, they are left to shrivel. This allows them to become soft and malleable which makes the cutting easier. In the process of cutting, enzymes are released that expose the tea to oxidation. Green tea, having little to none of this fermentation, remains green. With black tea, on the other hand, oxidation is allowed to continue. Once the leaf is brown, it is 'fired' in an oven thus stopping the fermentation process.

Q. Is green tea better for you than regular black tea?

A. Both green and black tea come from the same plant and so have similar levels of antioxidants, albeit slightly different ones. There are various health benefits of tea depending on they type of tea.

Q: What is an antioxidant?

A: An antioxidant is a compound, which retards oxidation. In the body antioxidants can 'soak up' free radicals.

Q: What is a free radical?

A: Free radicals are unstable substances which can disrupt the body’s biochemical processes. They have been implicated in cancer and heart disease.

Q: Which antioxidants does tea contain?

A: Along with fruits and vegetables which contain vitamins A, C, and E, green and black teas are a natural source of polyphenols and flavonoids, both of which have antioxidant activity.
Green tea has a greater amount of flavonoids called catechins. Black teas, on the other hand, have greater concentrations of theaflavins (TF’s) and thearubigins (TG’s.)

Q: What do laboratory findings show?

A. Catechins act as powerful inhibitors of cancer growth by scavenging oxidants before cell injuries occur and also inhibiting the growth of tumor cells. Both green and black teas have been used to show how cancers, such as tumors of the stomach and liver, decreased in studies that involved mice.
In other laboratory experiments, the derivatives of TF’s and TR’s have been used. These are the two pigments in black tea, and they were found to be more potent in anti-HIV-1 activity than catechins.

Q: As favored by the Brits, does the addition of milk reduce the antioxidant value?

A: The addition of milk does not appear to affect the amount of antioxidants actually absorbed by the body from the tea flavonoids. 'Tannins’ are regarded by scientists as flavonoids important in tea's color and its taste. Researchers have reason to believe flavonoids are some of nature’s most potent antioxidants.

Q. How much caffeine a day is ok to drink?

A. Because tea contains only small amounts of caffeine, drinking five to six cuppas daily is considered to be only 'moderate' caffeine levels. Other components in tea contribute to the lack of effects of caffeine on tea drinkers. Amino acids, such as theanine, cause tea to be calming. Polyphenols, discussed earlier, bind the caffeine contained in tea preventing its absorption.

Q: Does tea contain the same amount of caffeine as coffee?

A: No, tea contains only half the caffeine that coffee does.

Q: Are there any side effects to drinking tea?

A: There are virtually none. Rather, tea drinking helps maintain one’s mental clarity and alertness. This is in addition to its other contributions to good health, both those known and those yet to be discovered.


Note: We welcome more tea questions. Please send us your questions to lorien@hottesttea.com and we promise to answer soon!