Ginger Honey Plus Zinc

Finally, a Bigelow tea that performs. Fresh and very spicy ginger countered and smoothed by equally strong honey and grounded by red rooibos. Fennel isn’t distinct but probably rounds out the taste and nausea-calming effect of ginger. If Mastress Alita had a whole box of this, I’d gladly take it off her hands. How much zinc is actually in this?

One bag makes a full-flavored 8-10 oz cup.

Tea Plant News:

This year’s tea seed germination rates were very high for the 4 varieties I started. The sprouts are the healthiest yet, probably due to a strangely cool and foggy July. A few years ago I bought 3 or 4 varieties of seed, most of which turned out to be duds, including a variety from Taiwan. I think I have only a few surviving plants from those batches. Glad this years seeds are taking off!

The surviving tea plants from years past now in nursery pots do not like our normal dry season of unrelenting sun and can get sunburned easily if in the wrong spot during peak UV hours. They’re now doing well under the shade of a California coast live oak in one corner of the backyard, all grouped together.

Certain tea plants probably with very high sugar content seem to attract aphids twice a year, more so when the land is fully parched in September and October. Leaf curl and drop ensue. I had given up trying to control the aphids and now that the plants are bigger, they seem to bounce back easier from the biannual infestations. This is good. I can’t imagine how much stronger the 3- and 4-year-old plants would be if I had them in the ground. Why have I been dragging my feet on doing so for the past few years? The plants need to grow!

The original assamica plants did great for 2 years and then didn’t take well to transplanting from large planter boxes into nursery pots when I moved last year. The original Black Sea sinensis plants were very slow to grow the first few years but are now certainly outperforming the assamica, which I wasn’t expecting given our climate. Next year, I would like to try pruning for the first time and cloning the strongest Black Sea plants. I’m glad Camellias are patient plants since my green thumb isn’t the most saturated.

I love ginger! It’s a little to strong to drink it straight, but I love it as a dominant flavor in spiced teas, I love it in fruity blends, and I love it in food! But it’s rare for me to find a tea that highlights the ginger flavor without being a little overwhelmingly spicy and harsh. This tea is perfect in that regard. The ginger is front and center, but the honey and fennel balance out the ginger really well, adding depth and sweetness. I didn’t notice that it had rooibos in it until I looked at the ingredients today, but I don’t taste that in the blend at all. I am happy to drink this straight, and it is also great with heavy cream. It’s a nice one to tuck into my purse as a going out tea. It’s also great that all the ingredients are safe for pregnancy and helpful for heartburn, which feels a little counterintuitive because spicy flavors usually make heartburn much worse. My one complaint is that unless you can find it in a store, it is only available on from their website if you buy 6 boxes at once, which is a lot of one flavor of tea. I think individual boxes are available on Amazon and such, but at a much higher price than in stores. I would buy more Bigelow tea if their website made single boxes more available.

After learning my lesson about free tea left in the breakroom at work from the stinky feet Cinnamon Horchata tea (which I finally managed to finish), I only grabbed one bag of this instead of the whole box. So glad I did. The ginger is waaaaaaaaaay too spicy for me, making it one of the few cups that was simply undrinkable for me. And the flavor just tasted like one of those medicinal honey cough drops. Bleh.