Tea has been a prominent ingredient in spirits since the 1700s. Photo credit: Liqueurious
In the book, “The Art and Alchemy of Chinese Tea” (2011), author Daniel P. Reid discusses the significance of jin dan, the alchemical “golden elixir of life” in Chinese culture. Contrary to the Arab and Western alchemists who sought to create an elixir from real gold, the Chinese searched for a different tonic. “This precious essence,” Reid explains, “is the ‘green gold’ in the alchemy of Chinese tea.” As the centuries passed, cultures worldwide embraced tea’s health benefits and its recreational role. The two eventually merged when tea became involved in the modern version of alchemy—alcoholic liqueurs.
The first substantial influx of tea to reach Europe was most likely thanks to the Dutch East India Company in the early 1600s. While originally brewed for medicinal use, tea soon became a social fixture in society, albeit for those of wealthy status. But from the 1600s to the 1800s, society underwent massive changes, including industrialization and the emergence of a middle class. Both of the latter led to more disposable income and more leisure time in which to spend it.
Recreation Leads to Good Spirits
All of this added up to one word: recreation. Among the most popular forms of recreation was the consumption of alcohol, and liqueurs were enjoyed in multiple ways: before and after dinner, as an afternoon pick-me-up, and as a surreptitiously sipped lubricant for the ladies.
In the same period, spirits production became more efficient, making for better-tasting and cheaper products. In Europe, liqueurs had been a staple among the rich since the 1500s. The Italian noblewoman Catherine de Medici brought her favorite liqueur, alchermes, to the French court when she married King Henry II. In Holland, the Bols Company, founded in 1575, started producing multiple liqueurs flavored with exotic spices from the East. While not a spice, tea was still exotic in its own way and expensive, so it naturally made its way into liqueurs, allowing those who drank them to flaunt their wealth.
Eventually, it could be had by all members of society, albeit of different quality depending on price. In M. Demacy’s L’Art due distillateur liquoriste (1775), the author classifies liqueurs as “fine, ou bourgeois, ou commune” (fine, or bourgeois, or common) based on the amount of sugar and the purity of the other ingredients. Among the liqueur recipes, Demacy included was one for eau de thé or water of tea.
The Prominence of Tea Liqueurs
Almost a century later, in 1871, Pierre Duplais’s “A Treatise on the Manufacture and Distillation of Alcoholic Spirits” mentions tea multiple times as an ingredient in liqueur production. Eau de thé is among the recipes; its ingredients include two green teas—Imperial and Hyson—as well as Pekoe black tea.
Tea also appears as a component in a syrup and a perfumed ‘spirit,’ both of which were employed in making tea liqueur. Duplais’s recipe for Crème de Thé calls for the ‘spirit of tea,’ angelica root, alcohol, sugar, and water. The term “crème” is used to designate a liqueur with a higher sugar content, which leads to a more velvety texture.
Cocktails that contain tea liqueurs and infusions have become extremely popular all around the world.
In 1862, the first published recipe book devoted solely to alcoholic drinks, “The Bar-tender’s Guide, How to Mix Drinks or the Bon Vivant’s Companion,” featured a variety of tea liqueurs and liqueur bases. Bartender/author Jerry Thomas included three recipes using various teas. Eau de Thé combined Hyson and Souchong; huile de thé (oil of tea) used Imperial; liqueur de thé employed Hyson.
Recipes for generic tea liqueurs, which any liqueuriste or saloon keeper could produce, continued to appear. But, as specific liqueur brands emerged, they created their own proprietary recipes for the liqueurs they produced, including those that made tea liqueur.
The Evolution of Tea Liqueur Brands
With its long history of tea culture, Japan has produced and continues to produce several tea liqueurs. Some very rare bottles of Japanese green tea liqueurs from the 1960s, including those from Suntory and House of Koshu O-Cha (produced by Russian confectioner Morozoff), still exist. Green tea continues to serve as a base for Japanese tea liqueurs. Suntory currently produces Kanade Matcha Liqueur; Choya uses green tea from the Uji region, employing a cold-brew process to extract the tea’s character.
Many different types of tea, such as Darjeeling, green tea, and even hibiscus, are used to make liqueurs. Photo credit: Gabriel Boudier & Edmond Briottet.
As more tea-infused spirits–Silent Pool’s Black Juniper Gin uses Nepalese Himalayan black tea and Indian Cloud tea, as well as Suntory’s Roku Gin with Sencha and Gyokuro green teas–appear on the market, more liqueur makers see the value of tea as a botanical. Gabriel Boudier’s iteration uses Darjeeling, smoked black tea is a key component in Joseph Carton’s Thé Noir Fumé, and Edmond Briottet’s Liqueur de Thé Vert Hibiscusa contains a combination of green tea and hibiscus.
While Boudier, Carton, and Briottet are all French companies, many other brands exist. When Eamon Rockey founded Rockey’s Botanical Liqueur in New York, he desired a “strong dose of tea,” as he describes it. Wanting a product that complemented multiple spirits in cocktails, he tried first green tea and then black tea, settling on a mixture of both.
Rockey’s Botanical Liqueur balances the grassiness of green tea with black tea’s earthy qualities. Photo credit: Rockey’s Botanical Liqueur.
He notes that the result is a blend of green tea’s grassiness and black tea’s earthiness. “I always say that the tea makes [this liqueur] a ‘grown up beverage’… once the tea is added to the mix, the spirit becomes far more complex and structured.”
Slovakia’s Tantratea line includes over a dozen tea-based liqueurs, primarily black and white, but also rooibos, as the base. The liqueurs were inspired by a tradition that evolved in the snowy Tantra mountains, where travelers would be offered a hot cup of alcohol-fortified tea. Tantratea also steps into the amaro sub-category of liqueur with both a tea-based digestif and bitters. And, in England’s Cotswolds, Liqueurious produces three tea liqueurs: Ryokucha uses green tea, while Camellia and Decaf Camellia use black tea.
Just as the world of tea is vast, the world of liqueurs is ever-expanding, offering more and more creative choices. Tea liqueurs are finding a happy home, both sipped on their own or incorporated into inventive cocktails. While tea may not be a physical elixir of gold as many of the alchemists hoped, it is a deeply pleasurable elixir that lends its delicate, aromatic properties to the liqueurs it graces.