Northwest White Tea & Herb Blend

Seattle based, PCC Natural Markets, Portland based The Jasmine Pearl, and Sakuma Brothers Farm recently teamed up to offer PCC customers unique herb and tea blends made entirely out of local ingredients. PCC broke this news to their members last month with an article called "taken with tea."

This morning, while browsing the bulk teas at PCC, I saw these new blends for sale and decided to purchase a small amount to review here on my tea blog. I went with the white tea based blend which also contains blackberry leaf, nettle, lemon balm and lavender.

 

The dry leaf smells like lavender with some sweet grass, and wood notes. I used a heaping teaspoon of dry leaf, 8 ounces of 180° F water, and a medium Finum basket to infuse this blend. The resulting liquor was orange and fragrant. 

I love supporting local food and herb producers and I've enjoyed my past encounters with Sakuma's unmixed tea but this blend is not for me. The tea feels healthy and restorative to drink but it is too sweet and I really do not like the lavender flavor.

As an enthusiastic drinker of pure tea, perhaps I was never the target demographic for this product. I would be much happier to just see unadulterated Sakuma Brother's tea leaves on sale at PCC. That said, I'm sure many folks will think this blend has a great flavor and hopefully these products are finding fans among PCC shoppers. The quality of the ingredients and the wonderful people behind their production and blending makes them a good way to "drink local."