When you dunk a teabag in a mug of boiling water, do you ever wonder how the mixture of herbs or tea leaves got in there?
Courtney Powers knows exactly what it takes to create the perfect bag of tea with a unique flavor profile, and on Saturday, June 23, at the Shaker Heritage Society she’ll demonstrate how to tailor tea to any taste during a “Tea in the Garden” program.
“I didn’t really care for some teas I purchased from other companies and I wanted to make one I liked,” said Powers, who turned to tea after giving up coffee for Lent one year.
Powers will use herbs from the Shaker Heritage Society’s massive herb garden and put her blends up to the public taste test. All it takes is a scale, a steady hand and a lot of trial and error.
“You have to balance the flavor but certain flavors are really overpowering,” said Powers.
Powers will not only use herbs the Shakers fancied, like lemon balm or mint, but also pay homage to a practice that is uncommon today but was just another household chore in the 19th century.
“People were used to making their own tea. You didn’t go to the store and buy tea in bags so it was just something people would do on their own,” said Starlyn D’Angelo, executive director of the Shaker Heritage Society. “They would compress the herbs in bricks and basically wrap them in brown paper. Then they would do their own mixes at home.”
Shakers didn’t just use herbs for tea. Growing, packaging and selling herbs was one of the Shakers’ biggest industries. In fact, the society’s herb garden has more than 100 different herbs and an old brick drying house that needs a new roof.
In the 1800s, herbs were in high demand for both medicinal and culinary purposes. The Shakers were a primitive, outdoor warehouse of herb production and even took tips from neighboring Native American tribes to enhance their growing tactics.
Herbs were sold in markets within the Shaker community and also shipped down the Erie Canal and along bumpy wagon routes to be distributed nationwide and even in Europe.
“They had a huge herb agency,” said D’Angelo. “Our garden is to help interpret the history of the Shakers and various industries that they engaged in.”
The practical, aromatic plants were more than just a source of cash for the Shakers. As with many other simple tasks in the communal religious society, agriculture held a spiritual meaning.
“The Shakers really believed their work was a form of worship so doing the labor in the fields and in their gardens was important to them spiritually as well as in their temporal lives,” said D’Angelo.
They were a celibate community, meaning men and women weren’t supposed to come into physical contact with one another save for strict, controlled times. That meant that men grew the herbs and packaged them while women played the role of collecting herbs from the field.
At the Shaker Heritage Society, volunteers tend to the rows of herbs. There are popular plants, like parsley and basil, but also obscure varieties like sarsaparilla that were commonplace years ago.
“We have a lot of things that we grow that people may not be familiar with right now,” said D’Angelo. “We have many varieties of mint that surprise people, like chocolate mint and regular mint and … mint with different flavors.”
The garden also has vibrant rose bushes. Today, the colorful, thorny flowers are grown for aesthetic purposes but in the Shakers’ day, nothing was grown to simply be admired. The community tended acres of rose bushes to manufacture rose water, popular in baking and for making ice cream.
“That’s something people are pretty curious about. They don’t realize that something a rose actually had a purpose,” said D’Angelo.
Powers only just strayed from tea leaves to start experimenting with herbs after booking the Shaker demonstration. She said herbs are easier to blend than regular tea because the flavors “play nicer with each other” than tea leaves.
She sells pre-blended specialty teas that she selects from retail companies at her business Collar City Teas in Troy and creates concoctions for friends.
“It depends on what people are looking for,” said Powers. “Sometimes I have companies do the blending for me. This is more of a side thing; I don’t actually do it in the shop.”
Powers doesn’t yet sell her own blends but at the demonstration she’ll offer three tea varieties that are all her own. One is a tea made from raspberry leaf, one is made from peppermint and another is made from spearmint that “has a little bit of bite” but is good iced or hot.
Powers focuses on tea tasting events and said she’d eventually like to collaborate with other cafes in the area.
“I’d rather do more of the tastings and events,” said Powers. “Blending is nice but it’s difficult and time consuming.”
Pre-registration for “Tea in the Garden” is required by Tuesday, June 19. The program is $20 per person and takes place at 25 Meeting House Road in Albany at 2 p.m. Register by calling the Shaker Heritage Society at 456-7890 ext. 23
or emailing [email protected].
