Five Top Tea Trends to Fall in Love With
Tea may be an ancient tradition, but the beverage continues to experience growth and evolution in flavor and culture. Here are five tea trends to pore over while you sip on your next cuppa.
A World of Luxury Tea Awaits
Tea is the second most consumed beverage globally, but luxury tea sales saw a tremendous increase this past year, with tea drinkers focused on sampling some of the more high-end options. As a result, indulgent custom-blended teas featuring the finest hand-selected ingredients are becoming a palate favorite of both tea novices and aficionados. Elevate your tea experience by savoring flavors such as Pomegranate Rosehip, packed with fruit and flowers and blended with dried pomegranate, rosehip, tangerine, and orange, as well as cornflower, plum, and chamomile petals. Or sample the Organic Liza Hill Darjeeling tea from Lot 35, dubbed the “champagne of teas,” which evokes the flavor of fortified muscatel wine.
Make it a Teatail or Two
Are you looking to create a more spirited tea or add additional depth and flavor to your cocktail? Tea cocktails are reaching beyond the hot toddy with unlimited creative incarnations available. Try creative and delicious enhancements such as incorporating hibiscus tea into margaritas to give your cocktail a tasty and vivid pink enhancement. Alternatively, create a fresh take on simple syrup with honey and chamomile tea, or add some gin and simple syrup with Fairmont’s Lot 35 Creamy Earl Grey Tea for a spiked London Fog.
Cheers to Health as Wealth
Food as medicine has been a powerful approach to health and healing for years. Increasingly, evidence shows that tea can also boost your immune system, fight off inflammation, and potentially help to ward off cancer and heart disease. Your daily cuppa is the perfect way to insert some anti-inflammatory or immune-benefiting elements into your daily diet. Look to ingredients such as elderberries, taking center stage this year. Packed with antioxidants and vitamins, they are known to boost your immune system and could aid in taming inflammation and lessening stress. Floras Berry Garden is a decaffeinated herb and fruit tea from Lot 35 ideal as a morning pick-me-up or part of a soothing bedtime ritual featuring elderberry, currants, hibiscus, strawberry, blueberry, cornflower petals, and natural flavors.
Going Green - Sustainable Tea Bags
For generations, sustainably sourced tea has been a fixture, but recently green packaging has garnered much more attention, with sustainable tea bags becoming a must for consumers. Fairmont’s Lot 35 teas are free of nylon and petroleum-based compounds found in some tea bags. Produced by Metropolitan Tea Company, they use PLA pyramid tea bags made from plant-based material (sugar cane, corn, or abaca), both backyard compostable and biodegradable, perfect for holding your favorite tea.
Teatime with a Playful Twist
The ritual of drinking tea is constantly a feature in pop culture, but the Netflix show Bridgerton may have just inspired a new generation or two to covet their very own tea set. Floral designs may come to mind when thinking of a tea set, but modern new designs are bringing a fresh approach to the tradition of collecting beautiful teapots and teacups. Fairmont’s new Harlequin Afternoon Tea Set is a fabulous harlequin-patterned china set reflecting the modern spirit and joie de vivre of Fairmont Le Château Frontenac. With its playful colors of pink, blue, green, white, and purple in a whimsical geometric pattern, the set adds a level of fun and elegance to your teatime experience.
