Growing Your Own Cocktails, Mocktails, Teas & Infusions. Jodi Helmer

and a kick, and we had to really develop these flavor profiles to produce a full experience [in our mocktails]”

      Whether you order a craft mocktail from the bar or mix up a pitcher of mojitos to sip outside on a summer night, using freshly harvested ingredients adds an extra punch of flavor that turns a drink into an experience.

      A Local Tea Movement Is Brewing

      Tea has been cultivated for centuries, with the earliest records dating back to 2732 BC, when, according to legend, Emperor Shen Nung first drank tea after leaves from a Camellia sinensis bush—that is, the tea plant—drifted into his pot of boiling water. More reliable records show that tea was included in the medical text De Materia Medica, which was first published around 200 BC.

      De Materia Medica has been published in many languages throughout the centuries, but it always contained useful information about helpful plants—including tea.

      As tea started becoming more popular as a drink, not just a medicine, the cultivation, harvesting, and processing of Camellia sinensis started. During the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD), often referred to as the classic age of tea, the botanical beverage became known as the national drink of China; tea was sipped and savored from the Imperial Palace to rural villages. Tea also became the centerpiece of spiritual rituals. During the Tang Dynasty, Buddhist monk Lu Yu wrote Ch’a Ching, a tea treatise that centered Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucian teachings around traditional tea ceremonies.

      Toward the end of the seventeenth century, camel trains operating along the Silk Road transported tea between China and Russia. In 1610, the Dutch East India Company brought the first shipments of tea to Europe. Tea was first served to the public in 1657. Thanks to its high price, it was enjoyed only by the royal and aristocratic classes. It wasn’t until one hundred years after the first tea was imported to England that teahouses and tea gardens started popping up around London and tea became the national drink of the British Isles. So, while England might have a well-deserved reputation for serving high tea, the British were actually late adopters of tea culture.

      At first, tea was expensive and therefore only enjoyed by the rich.

      What Is a Tisane?

      Some of the most popular “teas” are not tea at all. True tea is made from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant; herbal teas, including popular brews such as chamomile and peppermint, are considered tisanes.

      Tisanes (pronounced ti-ZAN) are made from ingredients such as herbs, flowers, fruits, bark, and roots but no white, green, black, or oolong teas. (The French word for “herbal infusion” is tisane.) Rooibos (pronounced ROY-boss), also known as African red tea or red bush tea (because it’s made from a South African rooibos plant), and yerba maté (pronounced YER-ba MAH-tay), a South American botanical drink brewed from a plant in the holly family, are also considered tisanes.

      Unlike true tea brewed from Camellia sinensis leaves, which contain up to 90 milligrams of caffeine per 8-ounce (240ml) cup, tisanes are caffeine free. These teas, also called infusions or botanicals, can be sipped hot or iced.

      Dutch settlers also brought tea to America. The upper class who settled in New Amsterdam, later renamed New York, started drinking tea in the 1600s. The British East India Company secured a monopoly on tea sales in the American colonies after British parliament passed the Tea Act on May 10, 1773. The legislation angered colonists, and, on December 16, 1773, a group calling themselves the Sons of Liberty boarded ships anchored in the Boston Harbor and dumped 92,000 pounds of tea into the water. The event came to be known as the Boston Tea Party.

      Iconic in American history, the Boston Tea Party treated tea as a symbol of oppression.

      Pressure from independent tea merchants like Richard Twining uncovered corruption within the British East India Company and put pressure on the British government to end the monopoly on the tea trade. The campaign was successful, and the British East India Company folded in 1874, opening the door for America to import tea directly from China. Clipper ships began transporting the commodity across the ocean.

      Twinings, founded by an independent family of tea merchants who ultimately helped end the monopoly on the tea trade, remains one of the most successful and iconic British tea brands today.

      The rolling, stepped hills of Chinese tea plantations are where the most tea is produced in the world.

      Worldwide, China still dominates tea production, harvesting more than 1.8 million tons of tea each year. Other top tea-producing countries include India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia. The United States might not be a top cultivator of Camellia sinensis, but it is a significant importer.

      Approximately 80 percent of Americans are tea drinkers. Thanks to strong demand, US growers are experimenting with the crop and producing small-batch, artisanal teas with some success. The Charleston Tea Plantation in Charleston, South Carolina, has been growing tea since 1987 and was the sole commercial tea grower in the nation for many years. Now, the US League of Tea Growers reports that there are sixty farms in fifteen states growing Camellia sinensis. Most, including Table Rock Tea Company, The Great Mississippi Tea Co., and Virginia First Tea Farm, were started within the last ten years.

      Tea grown in the United States is more expensive. Labor costs are much higher than in traditional tea-producing countries, where growers might earn less than $20 per week, making domestic tea a high-end artisanal product. Compared to supermarket tea bags, which can retail for as little as $2.50 for 100 bags of black or green tea, loose-leaf tea grown and processed in the United States can cost as much as $1 per gram. (It takes about 2.5 grams of loose-leaf tea to brew a single cup.) The sheer rarity of US-grown tea justifies the high price, according to the US League of Tea Growers.

      A massive quantity of leaves is required to produce tea.

      Teas and infusions are incredibly popular in the United States, with a large variety available on standard supermarket shelves.