guilt-free pleasure: Partners Tea Co. zelda tea

Goodness gracious, look at yourself! You're hot and sweaty, and this brutally hot summer is just wringing all the life out of you. Matter of fact, the one place on your person that's dry is your mouth. You need something nice to drink to cool you off. We should all have tea, forthwith. I demand tea!

I drink tea every day. In true Southern fashion, I tend to prefer plain-jane black iced-tea, unsweetened, no lemon, thank you very much.

In that special way that no one's meatloaf tastes as good as Mom's, I don't like the way anyone sweetens tea except Mom and Grandma Smith. Everyone else just doesn't get the balance right, so I prefer not to exasperate my palate with poor imitations which merely hint at the grandeur of refreshment the perfectly sweetened tea affords..

Himself has turned me into quite the hot tea fancier, though, and my tea horizons have broadened fantastically. Wednesday night he treated me to a few tins of a new favorite: zelda tea by Partners Tea Co.

While his taste runs more to Assam black tea, I'm very fond of the glorious bergamot flavor of Earl Grey tea. Thus does zelda delight with flavors of Earl Grey, jasmine and rose petals. They call this a morning tea, but I couldn't resist a soothing cup of it last night as we watched a DVD. In winter, I like heavy, cream-addled teas like Masala Chai, but this tea was lovely with a hint of demerara sugar and no half and half or cream, making it a perfect summer tea.

One thing I've enjoyed recently is throwing a bag of one of my flavored teas in with the classic Luzianne brew for my iced tea. Lately I've been putting a bag of my precious, diminishing stash of Peet's Winter Solstice tea in with each pitcher of iced tea. I'm also loving that cold brew available from Lipton because you don't have to wait for it to cool down to enjoy, and it "brews" relatively quickly. OTOH, the cold brew is not so intense a tea, but I find it marvelous. I think with a bag of zelda thrown in, I'll have found my perfect summer tea.

I like my tea cold and bitter. Unless you're fixing a toddy for me when I'm under the weather, please don't put mint anywhere near my tea, and only when accompanied by generous doses of honey and medicinal spirits. *aherm* Just a thimble full, of course.

Oh, and I can't tell you why, but iced tea tastes best drunk from a mason jar. Just make sure you get one with a big enough mouth. :)