When a weary traveller arrives at his destination a few minutes shy of 6pm, it presents a dilemma for the welcoming host: what to offer – tea or a cocktail? Even when the guest is given the choice, it can be hard to decide between the two: really, you think, I want both.
The tea cocktail goes some way to resolving this dilemma. Tea may not be a common bartending staple (perhaps the best known tea cocktail, the Long Island iced tea, doesn’t actually count, because it has no tea in it) but it brings with it a smoky, aromatic complexity you won’t easily find elsewhere.
A lot, of course, depends on the tea: Earl Grey and breakfast teas feature regularly in drinks – builder’s tea, not so much. But if you’ve got the right tea and a little time you can easily produce a huge variety of cocktails. Here are some prime examples, tried and tested.
Joy
This is the cocktail they serve at teatime – alongside the cake and sandwich trolley – at the W hotel in London, and it features milk oolong tea. “We wanted to kind of bring it together in terms of our location,” says bar manager Keanu Rudden. “We’re in the middle of Chinatown.”
The Joy consists of 50ml gin, 25ml lemon juice, 50ml oolong tea, 15ml pandan syrup (you can make this with sugar, water and pandan leaves, or buy extract), 10ml vanilla syrup and 20ml egg white. Dry shake the ingredients first to foam the egg white, then add ice, shake again, and strain. Garnish with a sliver of white chocolate, and forget all about the tea in the pot.
Earl Grey Collins
One of the issues with putting tea in a cocktail is that tea is mostly water, and water dilutes everything else. Pritesh Mody’s Earl Grey Collins gets round this problem by combining gin, elderflower cordial, lemon juice and soda water, then sticking a teabag in it and serving it that way. The infusion intensifies as you drink, so a little patience is probably part of the recipe too. This is really more of a springtime cocktail, but sometimes you need a little of that in the dark days of November.
Yorkshire tea party
MeatLiquor’s tea punch pulls a similar trick: two teabags (one Yorkshire, one Earl Grey) are steeped in 350ml of gin, before adding grapefruit and lemon juices, sugar syrup and soda water, and serving it over ice. Alternatively, use 50ml of tea-infused gin (made by steeping six Early Grey teabags in 700ml of gin for a couple of hours), plus a bit of sugar syrup and orange bitters, to make Russell Norman’s Earl Grey martini.
Earl Grey sour
Some cocktails feature a tea-flavoured syrup, which is just sugar, boiled water and tea, a sealed bottle of which should keep in the fridge for up to a month (there’s a simple recipe here). Nicholas Harrison, director of food and beverage at the Municipal Hotel in Liverpool, deploys 20ml of Earl Grey syrup in his Earl Grey sour, along with 50ml gin (he uses Tanqueray), 30ml grapefruit juice and 15ml of egg white. The ingredients are dry shaken to foam the egg, poured over ice, and served with a grapefruit twist.
Breakfast martini
Another Harrison creation, this one filling a gap in the traditional daytime drinking schedule. Or perhaps it’s just named for the English breakfast tea syrup that serves as the key ingredient. Either way the formula calls for vodka (50ml), breakfast tea syrup (15ml), lemon juice (20ml) and lemon curd (20ml), shaken and strained and garnished with a toast soldier. If that doesn’t make breakfast the most important meal of the day, nothing will.
Floresta spritz
At Viajante87, a basement bar in Notting Hill, bartender Joe Stefani Rodgers makes this tea-based mocktail from 25ml Everleaf Forest non-alcoholic aperitif, 25ml sage syrup (you can easily make your own), 30ml of oolong tea, 20ml of lemon juice and enough soda water to top up a tall glass full of ice. Mocktails can sometimes be a little cloying but, thanks to the tea, this one is refreshingly astringent. “It brings a lot of dryness,” says Rodgers. “The main body of the drink is tea.”
Cornalina
This is the creation of Alessandro Mannello, bar manager of Joia in Battersea, south London. You can drink one of these sitting before a 15th floor window, just about level with the base the Battersea power station chimneys next door. If it’s tea time, you’ll be there when they turn the lights on.
You can also approximate one at home, but it’s a bit of a liquor cabinet clear-out – you’ll need white port, manzanilla sherry and two kinds of vermouth. Start by making a tea cordial from 200ml water, 200ml caster sugar, 25ml lemon juice and 3tsp of rooibos tea leaves. Boil the water, add the sugar and lemon and let the tea steep in it for up to 10 minutes. Strain and bottle.
To make the drink, put 10ml of this cordial into a cocktail shaker with 35ml of white port, 25ml of manzanilla, 12.5ml sweet vermouth, 12.5ml dry vermouth and plenty of ice. Shake and strain into a coupe glass, and garnish with a twist of orange.
Bhojpura Cutting chai
This one has a certain wintry appeal: chai tea, brewed and cooled, mixed with vodka, Baileys and vanilla essence. Jam it into a cocktail shaker with ice and shake hard. Garnish with star anise, saffron strands and a cinnamon stick, and pretend Christmas is here already.
