Just your cup of tea

Local shop blending its own custom teas for all seasons

It’s the same song every holiday season. Temperatures drop, and we all start pulling the chipped Christmas mugs down from the top shelf, dusting them off for some liquid warmth. Maybe we have an Irish coffee in mind, or a marshmallow-topped cup of hot chocolate.

The Red Stick Spice Company is here to remind us of a healthy option we might forget: tea. In Louisiana, we tend to think of it sweetened and swimming with ice cubes in the summer, but the fresh blends at Red Stick prove that tea can adapt to any weather. The local shop peddles oils, spices, rubs and Louisiana goods, but it’s their leafy creations that have been flying off the shelves this fall.

What began simply as retailing teas from small blending houses grew into a gourmet creative experiment for owner Anne Milneck and her team.

“In some of the pre-blended teas we were buying, what we wanted to stand out—what was in the name—wasn’t happening. So we just took it into our own hands,” Milneck says. “If we’re going to have a French Lemon Ginger, then we want to taste lemon and ginger. We want to make those statements. And then it starts to go from there, and it is endless what you can do.”

Nearly a quarter of Red Stick’s tea selection is now mixed in-house. And it’s not just individual customers who are stopping by to try a cup. Bigger customers like Oscar’s Pizza, for example, use their Lapsang Souchong tea to add campfire smokiness to s’mores ice cream.

Most of the blending happens at the careful hands of Lori Zachary, trained chef and owner of local food blog Little White Apron. Zachary’s palate and culinary instincts have helped bring to life black teas like the Pear Caramel Truffle, herbals with depth like the fennel-laced Detox Tea, and even an Orange Creamsicle tea inspired by Milneck’s summer cravings.

“To me it comes somewhat naturally, just knowing what things are going to taste like, the balances and pairings,” Zachary says. “And then when it comes to something like a ‘feel better’ tea, I think about what ingredients will have that effect and how to bring them in.”

Zachary begins with buckets and bushels of all-natural herbs, fruit peels, spices and leaves, blending each ingredient in by both careful measurements and intuition. Beginning with bases like antioxidant-rich rooibos, smooth black Ceylon or toasted Brazilian mate, Zachary adds anything from spearmint to caramel and chocolate chips, always with a flavor profile in mind.

“Lori is good at nailing it on the first try,” Milneck says. “A tea blender has tons of leverage and leeway. An herbal can be anything from a single drinker like Echinacea, which is great for cold and flu season, to an herbal with multiple ingredients, like our Fais Do Do blend. You can really do so much.”

For Zachary, the face-to-face interaction and smaller demand of a local company like Red Stick has allowed her to create teas that are both tailored to specific needs and well composed in taste.

One of their newest teas, a Lemon Lavender blend, began as a child’s invention during a demonstration at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library in September.

“We don’t like how tea-drinking has been made out to be so complicated, because it’s not,” Milneck says. “It’s hydration with health benefits. It’s simple, and it’s accessible.”
With these steaming cups to warm up even the dreariest day of flu season, Red Stick Spice Company’s teas offer all the spicy and decadent flavors of December goodies from local hands. redstickspice.com 

Loosen up
If you’re just getting started with loose tea, Anne Milneck has some beginner’s advice:

Get the right tools. “All you need to get started with loose tea is a pot, hot water and a way to infuse it. Chances are you have in your home a tea ball rolling around a drawer. If you don’t have one or don’t want to buy [one], you can use a coffee filter or a cheesecloth.”

Research ingredients. “Different ingredients have different effects in a tea. For a detox, you need licorice and fennel.”

Know your strength. “For steeping a stronger black tea, use more tea, not more time. With herbals, the exact opposite.”

Waste not. “Herbal teas are re-steepable, so you can get a lot of mileage out of them.”