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.

Green tea ice cream is one of my favorites. Before I worked for Mighty Leaf, I always wondered how they made it so green and tasty. Matcha, a green tea powder made from ground Japanese premium green tea leaves, is the wonder ingredient. Rich in taste and flavor, Matcha is a versatile ingredient that can be used to make beverages like lattes, frappes and ice cream.  Some chefs add  it to gourmet chocolates, or sprinkle it on fish. Think of it as a spice, and use accordingly. If you’re looking for a unique spin on ice cream, with a bit of caramel sauce to boot, check out the recipes below.

Ingredients

Ice Cream

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup half-and-half
6 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons Matcha green tea

Sesame-Caramel Sauce

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water
Juice of 1 lime (reserved from above)
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
Warm water, as needed, to thin the sauce

Preparation
You will need an ice cream maker for this recipe. Heat the heavy cream, half-and-half and salt in a sauce pan over medium heat without boiling it and then remove from heat. In a medium bowl whisk together the sugar and eggs. Whisking quickly so the eggs don’t cook, pour the hot cream mixture into the egg mixture.  Return to the sauce pan and cook over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture is thickens. Make sure to not let it boil. Once the mixture reaches around 170-180 degrees, quickly whisk in the Matcha green tea powder. Add the custard mixture to a bowl and cool in ice water.

Cover and chill custard in the refrigerator for one hour. Add the mixture to the ice cream maker and prepare according to ice cream machine instructions.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. In a heavy 1-quart saucepan, bring the sugar, water and lime juice to a boil over medium to high heat.

Cook until it’s golden brown, swirling the pan a few times, but do not stir. Do not allow the sugar to burn; the mixture should become an amber color. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat the cream until it’s warm, then add the cream, a few tablespoons at a time, to the sugar mixture. Stir gently with a wooden spoon to blend, being careful not to splatter, as this mixture foams up the sides of the pan. When the sauce is blended, add the toasted sesame seeds.

Because this sesame- caramel sauce will thicken upon standing, thin as needed with warm water prior to serving.

Serves
Serves 8.

Prep Time
20 minutes.

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.

The holiday season can be a flurry of frenetic energy.  Family arrives from out of town and needs to be entertained and fed.  Parties begin filling the calendar with ink.  Spice up the table this holiday season with tea-infused recipes.  Chef Vinita Jacinto brings together tea with fall and winter ingredients to whet the appetite and not break the bank.  Try the Green Apple and Walnut Salad with Rainforest Maté dressing paired with your favorite stuffing recipe.  Enjoy the Bombay Chai Brined Turkey with your favorite cranberry sauce or chutney.  Warm up some Ginger Twist Gingerbread and serve a la mode.  These recipes will get you in the holiday spirit!

Green Apple and Walnut Salad with Rainforest Maté Dressing

YIELD: Makes 4 servings

INGREDIENTS:

1/8 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/8 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons honey
¼ cup Mighty Leaf Tea Rainforest Maté tea reduction
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup celery, sliced on the diagonal
2 medium Granny Smith apples, peeled, quartered, cored; each quarter then thinly sliced crosswise
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

METHOD:

Whisk first 4 ingredients in small bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in oil. Season vinaigrette with salt and pepper. Combine celery, apples, and walnuts in large bowl. Add vinaigrette and toss to coat. Season salad to taste with salt and pepper.

TO MAKE THE RAINFOREST MATÉ REDUCTION:

Use 2 Tea Pouches to brew I cup of tea following the prescribed 5-minute brew time. Then reduce the tea on medium heat to about one quarter cup.

Bombay Chai Brined Turkey

INGREDIENTS:

(for brining a 20-22 pound turkey)

15 Mighty Leaf Tea Bombay Chai Tea Pouches™
2 cups Kosher Salt
1 1/3 cups Light Brown Sugar

METHOD:

Bring one and a half gallons of water to a boil in a large pot. Remove from heat. Add the Tea Pouches and steep for about 20 minutes. Remove the Tea Pouches and add the sugar and salt. Stir until both are dissolved. Cool the liquid.

Submerge the turkey in the tea brine. Refrigerate for 36-48 hours.

TO COOK:

Drain the turkey. Pat dry. Stuff with your favorite stuffing. Tie the legs together. Brush with oil and roast for about 3 hours till the thermometer registers an internal temperature of 175? Fahrenheit. Let it rest at least 30 minutes or more before carving.

Ginger Twist Gingerbread

YIELD: Makes 12 servings

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1 1/2 teaspoons Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/2 cup Butter
1/2 cup Sugar
1 Large Egg, beaten
1 cup Mild Molasses mixed with 1 cup hot Mighty Leaf Tea Ginger Twist infused tea (to make the tea use 6 Tea Pouches™ to 1 cup hot water and brew for 6-8 minutes)

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Beat together butter, sugar, and egg in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. In 3 batches, alternately beat in flour mixture and molasses mixture at low speed until smooth. Pour batter into a greased 9- by 2-inch square metal baking pan and smooth top. Bake cake in middle of oven until a tester comes out clean, 45 to 55 minutes. Cool cake in pan on a rack.

Serve with lightly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

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.

Ever wonder how green tea ice cream is made or the green tea latte you had at Starbucks?  Matcha is the key ingredient, a tea powder made from premium green tea unique to Japan.  Essential to the celebrated Japanese green tea ceremony, Matcha is well- known for its health benefits and rich, intense taste.  Versatile enough for any season, this tea powder is ideal in summer for making green tea ice cream, iced tea lattes and green tea smoothies.

We have sourced a super-premium grade Matcha and a convenient Green Tea Latte and Frappe Mix, both perfect for mixing up ice cold tea concoctions that are sure to please.   Enjoy the recipes below.  Try experimenting with Matcha in new ways and let us know if you any recipes you would like to share.

Tea Smoothie or Frappe with Mighty Leaf Frappe Mix:

1 rounded tbsp. Matcha Green Tea Latte & Frappe Mix
1 8 oz. cup of milk or soy milk
4-5 cubes ice

Fill an 8 oz. cup with 4-5 cubes ice and plain milk or soy milk. Pour ice into a blender and add  Matcha Green Tea Latte & Frappe Mix.  Blend until smooth.  (makes 8 oz. cup)

Iced Green Tea Latte with Mighty Leaf Frappe Mix:

1 rounded tbsp. Matcha Green Tea Latte & Frappe Mix
1 8 oz. cup of milk or soy milk
ice

Combine 8 oz. of plain milk or soy milk and add Matcha Green Tea Latte & Frappe Mix and steam the milk using a steamer until it creates a fine froth.  Pour over ice. (makes 8 oz. cup)

Matcha Green Tea Smoothie with Plain Matcha:

1 rounded tsp. Matcha
2 tbsp. sweetened condensed milk
1 cup milk
½ oz of simple syrup or agave nectar
Two full cups of ice

Blend all ingredients together and enjoy!    Makes 16 oz. serving size.

Matcha Green Tea Ice Cream:

2 cups whole milk
1/4 cup Matcha Green Tea
2 cups heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup granulated sugar
Grated rind of 1 lime
Few drops of vanilla extract

You will need an ice cream maker for this recipe. The recipe has a slight green hue.

In a heavy saucepan, bring the milk and tea to a boil. Remove the mix from the heat and infuse for 1 minute. Put the milk mixture in a clean saucepan, and add the heavy whipping cream, sugar and lime zest. Bring the mix to a boil and stir until the sugar dissolves completely, about 5 minutes. Remove it from the heat, cool, then add the vanilla extract.

Chill the mixture until it’s cold, then freeze it using an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Sweet summer is here with bountiful heat.  Iced tea is always perfect for chilling out.  But we also invite you to explore other ways of incorporating tea into summer thirst quenchers.  A renaissance is occurring in the culinary world where tea is showing up for summer in unexpected places like on restaurant menus in cocktails or food .  We decided to put a spin on sangria for summer and developed a  Sangria Tea Collection with a variety of recipes to please any palate.

Enjoy our White Tea Sangria recipe below.  And be sure to check out our Sangria Tea Collection for more sangria tea recipes (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) that also include Red Tea and Chamomile Citrus Sangria.

White Tea Sangria

1 750-ml Bottle Dry White Wine

3/4 cup Peach Schnapps

18 oz. Brewed Mighty Leaf White Orchard Tea (2 Tea Pouches)

1/4 cup sugar

4 Peaches, cubed

1/2 Honeydew, cubed

Stir first 4 ingredients in large pitcher until sugar dissolves.  Add peaches and honeydew.  Chill for a couple of hours.  Serve in wine glasses and spoon fruit over sangria in each glass.

-Serves 7 wine glasses.

Hello tea lovers!  I am back from my trip to India and boy, what a trip it was!  While visiting my family, I planned a visit to Makaibari Tea Estate, which is situated in the Darjeeling hills of northeastern India.  Since 1859, Makaibari has produced noteworthy teas while conserving the rainforest in which it is located and reflecting the wonderful soul of the local community.

My parents and sister accompanied me on this adventure to Makaibari, which began with a twenty-hour train ride from New Delhi to New Jalpaiguri and concluded with a scenic, two hour taxi ride that delivered us to the tea factory.  While we were prepared to be housed by village families in rustic conditions, we ended up in two recently-built eco-huts that boasted running water and western-style toilets.  However, our interest in our accommodations was quickly overshadowed by our fascination with our beautiful surroundings – there were tea bushes everywhere we looked and the clouds seemed to rest on the hills.

After a quick cup of tea, I took off to meet with the Estate Manager, as I was going to spend time every day working and sharing all that happens to tea from plucking to packing.  That evening, I was invited to the reporting meeting that takes place at the end of each day. All of the estate supervisors gathered with the manager and in an old fashioned register book, they recorded all that happened that day, how much tea was plucked, and how many pluckers would be needed the next day.

Over the next five days, I walked through the rainforest seeing several varieties of bamboo, birds, deer, herbal plants, and tea, of course.  I worked with the village women to pluck tea, rode on a tractor transporting the weighed tea to the factory.  I worked through all of the tea processes at the factory, visited the health clinic, the school, the owners’ bungalow, went sightseeing, to the local market, and so much more.  The week just flew by! Though my bones hurt, I was aglow from within.

Sadly, shortly after I returned from India, Makaibari was devastated by Cyclone Aila.  Winds with torrential rain approached at over 100 miles per hour.  It tunneled into the hills, increasing its speed threefold and destroying anything in its path. The carnage ended 11 hours later, completely devastating the community.  Fortunately, no lives were lost at Makaibari, but many in the surrounding area were not so fortunate.

The people of Makaibari – the community that I lived with, talked to, ate with, and worked alongside – were just amazing.  My heart goes out to them in this difficult time.  Despite the challenges that lie ahead for this community, I am confident that Makaibari will rebuild and its people will continue to produce their lovely tea, which truly captures the spirit of the place.

Upon my return from India, I was inspired to experiment in my kitchen with my new tea and a popular Nepalese dish that I enjoyed during my trip – Momo.  Momos are dumplings quite like wontons. They are typically made with chicken, lamb, or vegetables, and are steamed and served with a spicy chili sauce.  Here is a recipe that I developed upon my return that marries the food and tea wonderfully. Enjoy!

 Ingredients:

1 packet round wonton wrappers (this is much simpler than making the dough)
1 pound lean ground meat of choice (chicken, lamb, or pork)
2 to 3 green onions, chopped finely
2 Tbsps cilantro, chopped finely
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp minced ginger
Salt and pepper to taste
4 cups of Darjeeling tea brewed for six to eight minutes (green tea also would work)

Directions:

Place all of the filling ingredients in a bowl. Season, and let sit in the refrigerator for about half an hour. Take a wonton wrapper and put one teaspoon of the filling in the center.  Fold to make a crescent and pleat the edges. Make sure that they are well sealed.

Set up your steaming basket, making sure that the base is oiled so that the Momos will not stick to the bottom. Arrange the Momos and steam them for 10 to 12 minutes. In a soup bowl, place four or five Momos and add in the tea. You may garnish with a slice of lemon and a sprig of cilantro.

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.

I’ve been a bartender and mixologist in San Francisco for 8 years and am involved in running the San Francisco School of Bartending.  In my upcoming posts, we’re going to learn about how to make cocktails incorporating tea.  This post includes a recipe for a Tea Rum Cocktail.  But, first let’s start by finding out more about how the combination of tea and rum came together to play a role in inciting the American Revolution.

Most of us remember learning that the American Independence movement began with the Boston Tea Party.  Fed up the with the British imposed tea tax, in 1773 the colonists stormed onto a ship docked in Boston Harbor and dumped its tea cargo into the water. Other ports joined in on similar festivities culminating with the start of the Revolutionary War ultimately based on the premise: no taxation without representation.

However, most of us don’t know what discord actually led to “no taxation without representation” and even to the Boston Tea Party in the first place.  The discord between Britain and the New World did indeed begin with a tax on a beverage, but it was not tea. It was rum.  It began in 1733, forty years earlier, when the British imposed something they called the Molasses Act.

Molasses is the bi-product of refining sugar cane into fine sugar.  When old world countries such as England and France first settled the West Indies, they brought sugar cane with them from Indonesia.  They then planted the sugar cane on the islands where they found perfect conditions for the plant to thrive.

Sugar refineries were set up on the islands and refined sugar was sent back to the Old World.  At first people dumped the molasses into the ocean, but then they got smart.  Feeling a thirst and lacking the ability to grow grapes and make wine, they realized they could make a crude beer from the molasses, which they then distilled into rum.

Sugar cane and molasses were also transported to the New England States.  The colonists used molasses to make rum which they enjoyed themselves and exported to Africa to pay for slaves.  In fact, rum, not whisky, was America’s first alcoholic beverage. Whisky wasn’t introduced to the states until the late 1700′s.

With the Molasses Act of 1733 the British issued a stiff tax on molasses imported to the colonies from French sugar cane producing islands.  Although the tax was intended to support purchase of English molasses, the colonists preferred the superior quality and greater availability of French molasses.  Rum provided for a large majority of the new state’s export trade. The tax infringed not only on the colonists’ pocketbooks, but also on their drinking habits. So the colonists ignored the tax and continued their purchase and use of French molasses.

This descent was the seed from which future defiance of English law would sprout.  In 1764, the English imposed the Sugar Act which made the Molasses Act more enforceable. Duties began to be collected on the sales of molasses.  Rum distilleries in the colonies organized boycotts of British imports under the banner of “no taxation without representation”, which became a popular slogan. All this occurred before the famous tea party.

So you see it was actually rum, and not tea that spurred on the Revolutionary War.  Wait, let me put it a different way, it was rum and tea.  This historic combination led to the greatest war in American History.  Don’t think that the tea and rum mixture is only effective at liberating a people. It’s also effective as a libation to be drunk by liberated people.

We can toast to our now British allies by enjoying the following recipe for a Tea Rum Cocktail.  This recipe resembles the punch that British sailors drank in the 1600′s. A recipe using tea and rum they adopted from India.

Tea Rum Cocktail

2 oz. Aged rum (smooth and mellow such as Zaya)
2 oz. Mighty Leaf Organic Breakfast Tea (brewed and cooled)
1⁄2 oz Lime juice (fresh)
1⁄2 oz. Demerara sugar (or 3/4 oz. simple syrup or maple syrup)

Shake all ingredients in a shaker with ice.  Strain into a martini glass.  Sprinkle in fresh nutmeg.