Journal

Lavender Iced Tea, Without the Syrup

Cafe lavender iced tea is black tea, ice, and lavender syrup. You can skip the syrup if the lavender is already in the blend.

Agua de Jamaica: One Flower, Half a Dozen Names

Agua de jamaica is dried hibiscus, water, and sugar, steeped and poured over ice. The flower goes by a different name in nearly every country that drinks it.

How to Make a London Fog, and the One We Make Instead

A London Fog is Earl Grey, steamed milk, and vanilla. It is not from London. The best-known account puts it in Vancouver.

What's a Menjunje? The Thousand-Year Story of the Word on Our Pouch

Menjunje is a Spanish word with an Arabic root, a 1609 use by a Cusco-born writer, and a 1734 dictionary entry that quotes him.

Vanilla Is an Orchid, and It Grows Wild in the Amazon

Vanilla is the cured fruit of a climbing orchid, hand-pollinated one flower at a time. It is native to the American tropics, and Peru's Amazon grows its own.

Emoliente: The Dawn Brew Peru Wrote Into Law

Before dawn in Lima, the emolientero pours emoliente from a steel urn: barley, flaxseed, boldo, and lime. What the drink is, why Peru wrote it into law, and the ingredient it shares with our Rooted.

The Busiest Ingredient in the Tea Aisle Doesn't Have a Name

Two words near the bottom of the box do an enormous amount of work. What "natural flavors" legally covers, why flavored tea leans on it, and how to read a tea panel in about ten seconds.

The 12,000-Year-Old Pantry: What a Dig in Chile Found Beside the Fire

The oldest physical evidence of people keeping a plant we still brew is not in China. It is a peat bog in southern Chile, where boldo leaves turned up among plant remains more than twelve thousand ...

Why Cold-Brewed Tea Barely Turns Bitter

Hot water pulls tannins fast; cold water is far slower to touch them, which is why an overnight jar of loose leaf comes out sweet instead of sharp. The chemistry, the method, and the cold hibiscus ...

What Is Butterfly Pea Flower? The Blue Petal in a Berry-Red Cup

Butterfly pea flower is one of seven ingredients in Gather: mild on the tongue, famous to the eye. Where the flower comes from, and why the cup it lives in pours deep berry red.