Making tea cocktails always provide an opportunity to explore the delicious flavors and nuances of tea blends and infusions. Pilar Gutierrez of Mighty Leaf recently spend some time with the master mixologist at Ozumo Restaurant in San Francisco whipping up some tea cocktails. Ozumo has developed and offers at their restaurant cocktails made with Mighty Leaf that include the Yuzu Mitsu with Organic Sencha Green Tea, the Twist Ginger with Ginger Twist and the Bourbon Nectar with Organic African Nectar.

You can find details on the recipes below.  They are all easy and convenient to make.  Enjoy!

Yuzu Mitsu

Ingredients
2 oz Mighty Leaf Organic Sencha Green Tea
1.5 oz. Ketel One Vodka
.5 oz. Green Tea Liqueur
Dash of Yuzu juice

Preparation:
Combine all ingredients and ice in a mixing tin and shake to combine. Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a twist of lemon.

Twisted Ginger

Ingredients:
2 oz. Mighty Leaf Ginger Twist Tea
1.5 oz. Sky Ginger Vodka
.25 oz. Simple Syrup
Juice of 1/2 Lemon

Preparation:
Fill a bucket glass with ice and build drink over it. Stir all ingredients lightly to combine and garnish with a slice of lemon and two small straws.

Bourbon Nectar

Ingredients:
2 oz. Mighty Leaf Organic African Nectar Tea
1.5 oz. Bulliet Bourbon
.25 oz. Simple Syrup
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Preparation:
Combine all ingredients in a mixing tin and shake to combine. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with a twist of lemon.

Spring evokes freshness, the scent of flower blossoms, the end of winter and for some spring break. If you are looking to escape to the tropics without ever leaving the comforts of home, I invite you to mix up a Lemon Tea Drop, Mighty Leaf’s spin on the popular Lemon Drop cocktail. Using tea in cocktails is a great way to infuse more traditional drinks with new flavors including green tea and fruited herbals. Check out the recipe below and let us know what you think. Cheers and happy steeping!

Ingredients:

1 oz. Grey Goose Citron or similar citrus vodka
¾ oz. iced Mighty Leaf Green Tea Tropical or Chamomile Citrus
1 oz. Cointreau or Monin Lemon Syrup
1 wedge of fresh lemon muddled with ice or squeezed

Preparation:

Shake and pour into a sugar coated rim of a cocktail glass.

To most bar goers now, the martini is generic for vodka served up in a cocktail glass, or maybe even some flavored vodka concoction like a chocolotini or Appletini. But that’s not how the martini got its start. In the late 19th century up until at least the 1960s, the martini was a gin drink.

Many theories exist as to exactly how the martini was invented, exactly what it had in it, and who exactly created it, but all seem to miss complete conviction. We do know that right around the time the martini was established in a form more recognizable today (late 19th century), a drink existed known as The Martinez Cocktail: an interesting cocktail we’ll look at today.

Few drinks have persisted with the same voracity and fortitude as the martini and yet changed so much in meaning for each subsequent generation of young drinkers. Although less popular now, for many of our parents (or maybe grandparents) growing up, the Martini had dry vermouth in it.  Dry vermouth was invented by Joseph Noilly in 1813 – a mixture of 20 herbs and spices macerated into the white wine for 3 weeks and aged in small oak casks exposed to the Mediterranean sun for 12 months.

The strong character of dry vermouth needs greater care in its use and storage behind a bar. Yet, after prohibition ended in 1933, the country found itself at a loss for knowledgeable purveyors of fine spirits and skilled artisans of the bar craft. Bar culture as we knew it had inexorably changed as respectable women were now frequent bar goers and our palates had shifted into a world of cocktails dominated by sugar and fruit juice which were needed for the 13 years of prohibition to mask the low quality black market spirit readily available.

Consequently, vermouth was now let to become stale as it lingered unrefrigerated behind the lay-bar as the knowledge of how to balance its complex nature was lost. Drinkers called for less and less vermouth in their martinis and recipes for the martini shrank in their use of vermouth as we moved further away from the end of prohibition. To what is now known as the dry martini, which calls for a whisper of dry vermouth, if even that.

From its early origins up to prohibition, the martini in America had much more dry vermouth in it. Indeed, since the rest of the world did not experience prohibition, outside the U.S. the martini to this day is still conceived of as heavily saturated with dry vermouth. In fact, if you ask for a martini in Paris today, chances are that you’ll get a drink which is 100% dry vermouth.

 The first use of gin and vermouth together, as far as anyone can tell, was in a newspaper article which called to some confusion as to whether a manhattan was to use gin or whisky. This isn’t as crazy as you might think since gin’s roots in Holland were to use large portions of malted barley as a base to create the alcohol. In fact, the first published recipe for The Martinez, which many credit as appearing in O.H. Byron’s 1884 book The Modern Bartender, called for Genever, the very style of gin from Holland that used a malt heavy base.

Whether or not The Martinez was simply a variation of the manhattan, or serves as the root of what we now know as the martini, the person most often credited with its invention is Jerry Thomas. The man known as “the Professor” and the person who stylized our modern conception of the bartender as a persona and bartending as a profession, Jerry is famous for writing the first compendium dedicated to mixing drinks called The Bon Vivant’s Companion whose first edition appeared in 1862.

The Martinez calls for gin, sweet vermouth, maraschino cherry liqueur, and bitters. But today we’re making the Mar-tea-nez, a cocktail Beefeater created incorporating use of real tea to showcase its new product Beefeater 24. As gin makers use more exotic and experimental botanicals to flavor their gins, Beefeater, the only major producer of London Gin actually made in London, creates Beefeater 24, a super high end gin which uses tea leaves, among other botanicals, as a flavoring agent.

Desmond Payne, master distiller at Beefeater and creator of 24, was inspired by James Burrough, the father of Beefeater who was actually a tea merchant in the 19th century. Here is our recipe for The Mar-tea-nez using the super premium teas of Mighty Leaf which stands as our contribution honoring James Burrough’s roots in the world of tea and Beefeater 24s recognition of tea’s remarkable qualities.

The Mighty Mar-Tea-Nez

1¼ oz Beefeater 24 gin
1¼ oz Sweet Vermouth (alt. Dubonnet or Lillet Rouge)
1 bar-spoon maraschino liqueur (i.e. Luxardo brand)
1 dash Angostura Aromatic bitters
1 Mighty Leaf Organic Earl Grey Tea Pouch

Add all ingredients into a small pot and bring to a boil.  Steep the Mighty Leaf Organic Earl Grey Tea Pouch into ingredients for 4 minutes; remove Tea Pouch and let cool (for a more intense tea flavor let cool with Tea Pouch). Transfer ingredients (without Tea Pouch) into a mixing glass. Stir well over ice. Strain in to a martini glass and garnish with a lemon twist.

As mixologists, we are continually experimenting with new flavors and sensations to create simple cocktails with complex flavor profiles to share with the world. Trends play an important part in the creativity and development of new drinks. Today, we see a major movement toward healthier living and longer life. Products that focus on low-cholesterol and a healthy heart have long been prevalent on our supermarket shelves.

Tea in combination with alcohol is one of the newest health trends to stimulate the palates of consumers in the states. Teas have intense aromatics that arouse the nose as well as ingredients that have well documented therapeutic properties. Many teas possess polyphenols which are active ingredients in tea which appear to have antioxidant and anticancer properties and are also thought to lower cholesterol.

Some ingredients in tea prevent blood clots, similar to aspirin. Other beneficial chemicals in tea include fluoride, which is protective against tooth decay.

In contrast to the often sweet and over ripe characteristics found in the fruit usually mixed with spirits, tea possesses tannin, an ingredient popularly associated with red wine. Tannin has a remarkable ability to balance our palates against the sugar in cocktails.

Tannin also provides complex interaction with the proteins found in many of our foods which adds a unique gastronomic element when tea is used in cocktails. The bitter oils and acids found in different teas provide greater nuance and complexity to our spirited beverages. We have just begun to scratch the surface of teas ability to enhance the spirits we drink.

There are several ways to incorporate tea into alcohol. The two main ways are to either add the tea directly to a drink or steep/infuse the tea into the alcohol itself. By simply adding tea, one can brew their favorite flavors and combine them with the alcohol of their choice (currently the top liquor used is vodka, closely followed by gin and scotch). Through steeping, one infuses the tea essence directly into the alcohol allowing for the extraction of certain desired flavors as well as a product with a longer shelf-life and an easier to pour/more consistent taste.

Many tea-infused products have already hit stores and are making their way to bars around the world. Some of the more popular brands are:

Suntory Zen Green Tea Liquor
Qi Spirits
Jeremiah Weed Sweet Tea Flavored Vodka
Aperitea Mixers

Here is a wonderful cocktail recipe incorporating Mighty Leaf tea.

Danielle’s Monkey Mint Tea Cocktail

1 oz. Citron Vodka
6 oz. brewed Mighty Leaf Marrakesh Mint Green Tea (cool)
1 oz. 100% Pom Wonderful Pomegranate Juice
1 tbsp honey syrup* (two parts honey, one part warm water)

Mix together honey, citron vodka, pomegranate juice, and cold Marrakesh Mint Green Tea tea.  Shake well and serve over ice. Garnish with a sprig of mint and a lemon wheel.