For many, Tea is just winter evenings, steaming cups and smoky aromas. For others, brewing is a ritual to be enacted even with 45°C in the shade, so as not to give in to sugary, prepackaged drinks. But what few people know is the trends of the moment is combining tea with cocktails.
As an ingredient for Cocktails, Tea, will have to be seen as it is considered by millennial producers: a liquor. And yes, as elsewhere repeated many times, that is how the drink resulting from the infusion of various types of Tea is defined. But the word liquor should not necessarily make us think of alcoholic cocktails, because by mixing the infusions with syrups, for example, will result in a non-alcoholic, thirst-quenching cocktail characterized by a strong and intense taste.
Which Teas?
Delicate White Teas are well suited to fragrant preparations played on light aromas, while Green Teas and Black Teas, with a stronger character, also go well with spirits and liqueurs. Fresh fruits and spices complement the more innovative recipes that offer refined and unexpected taste combinations. The most suitable spirits for the purpose are Gin, Tequila, Vodka, Rum, Bourbon, Brandy, Whiskey and Scotch.
Mixing
Infusion can be done in several ways:
- by hot water infusion: preparing the Tea as we would normally do, a little more concentrated, let it cool and then mix it with the other ingredients, alcoholic or not, of the Cocktail.
- with the hydroalcoholic technique: the Tea leaves are soaked in distilled spirits, liqueurs or hydroalcoholic mixtures. This causes the liquid’s soaking time to vary: instead of the classic 3-5 minutes, the Tea may soak for a few hours or for days at a time.
- in cold water: if you want to preserve all the Tea’s full charge of aromas and flavors, infusion in cold water is ideal. The temperature should not be more than 4ºC, so the infusion should be refrigerated and the leaves will steep for at least 8 hours. By adding syrups, this is the perfect solution to please even teetotal friends.
The right amount
The basic rule remains, however, to use the right amount of Tea. The taste of Tea runs the risk of being overwhelmed by that of spirits, and the advice of mixology experts is to add more than a teaspoon of leaves per cup of water and follow the right infusion times.
Two Recipes
But leaving daring experimentation to the professionals in the field, even the home kitchen can become a perfect bar counter where you can make your own Tea-based cocktails. The following two recipes are simple and doable even without specific Mixology knowledge or skills.
Vodka Sour with Iced Tea (for one drink)
The first recipe I want to propose is perfect for summer and is the Vodka Sour with Iced Tea, a recipe which I had the pleasure of tasting during an event a few years ago. A simple and very pleasant cocktail that I also proposed during one of my Afternoon Teas, meeting with considerable success.
In this Vodka Sour, the tea, a Pai Mu Tan (Chinese white tea) flavored with fruit, is infused in Vodka purely in order to create a distillate that in this way will perfectly absorb all the scents of the Tea leaves.
The first thing to do is to steep 15 g of Tea in half a liter of Vodka for 4 1/2 hours.
Ingredients
- 45 ml Vodka in which the Tea was infused
- 25 ml of lemon juice
- 15 ml sugar syrup
- (1 drop of egg white)
- Ice
- Lemon and orange peel for garnish
Fill a Tea cup, preferably glass, with ice and allow it to cool. Pour the tea-infused vodka, lemon juice, sugar syrup, and ice into the shaker. Shake vigorously for 30 seconds. Empty the tea cup of ice. Pour the drink into the cup. Garnish with lemon and orange peel.
Oolong Aperitif
The second recipe is even simpler, perfect for an aperitif and requires no special tools:
Ingredients
- Oolong tea
- Sparkling wine
Prepare some good Oolong Tea, let it cool and mix with the chosen sparkling wine, in a flûte, putting half dose of Tea and half of Sparkling Wine.