Some of the best parts about being a tea sommelier is bringing people together or pairing good food with fine teas. Today, we’re bridging the gap between a cocktail and a mocktail. This Summer, Jadetiger Tea® began a collaborative venture wtih Harvest Restaurant at The Ranch Laguna Beach to highlight the bounty of their biodynamic garden by creating a tea’liciously, pretty, quenching cup of goodness. Warning, one sip will likely lead to a 2nd and 3rd.

Before pulling my sleeves up to gather tea ingredients, I took a moment to be in that magical feeling when I’m at The Ranch (BTW if you haven’t been, it’s a MUST GO, MUST SEE, MUST FEEL kind of place). Most come to Laguna Beach to experience the ocean and the beachy vibes. Well, newsflash, unless you time it right, you will be overwhelmed by the waves of people along with lots of frustrating traffic! Instead, venture just hundreds of yards north of Pacific Coast Highway to find what I call a '“mini-Yosemite”. The Ranch, home to the old Ben Brown’s as long time Lagunans know it, is a boutique golf resort and home to an ethereal woodsy, peaceful landscape of trees and local fauna that immediately brings the blood pressure down. The fields boast a resident herd of deer who casually saunter about the 9-hole golf course. Instead of granite, hues of red overhanging sandstone cliffs frame the perfect Ansel Adams image of nature at it’s best. So I digress, but my mind conjures these thoughts: peace, quiet, beauty of the place I call home: Laguna Beach.

So I snap back to reality, roll my sleeves up and start gathering ingredients to blend. First, I gravitate towards the gently floral, organic green jasmine tea as a base. Then I build on the jasmine notes and find the lavender. Next, a pivot towards a citrus profile to bring out the lemon balm from The Ranch’s farm, and add a sprinkling of organic orange peel. As a final touch, I needed something special to set this blend apart from just any other tea… butterly pea flower petals!! These flower petals impart a bluish hue to each cup, and when acid of a lemon or lime are added, the anthocyanin in the pea flower is activated and voilà!!!! The infusion immediately levels up to a a brighter purplish pink

One more visual addition for aesthetics… make it pretty with garden-grown borage flowers from the garden’s flower beds. After a few tweaks to balance the floral and earthy tones are made, the blend is handed off to Harvest’s mixologist and master bartender to start creating a botanical elixir to consummate the blending of their garden’s harvest and Jadetiger’s full leaf organic tea.

The resulting cocktail is pictured above… The remaining questions are: would you order their cocktail or mocktail, and how many would you drink??

You decide, these gorgeous cocktails and mocktails are being served at Harvest Laguna a few more short weeks!

Stay tuned for the announcement of the next collaborative Fall spiced tea blend!!

Cheers!