When it comes to special occasion dinners no Southern table is complete without a pitcher (or two) of iced tea.  As I wrote in my 2010 cookbook Third Coast Cuisine, “. . . iced tea is always sweet.  If you order iced tea at a restaurant or café you should expect and receive a glass of sweetened tea.  There is a drink who’s recipe closely resembles iced tea except for the omission of sweetener.  It is called “unsweetened tea,” not iced tea.  It is similar to iced tea in the same way that diet cola is similar to cola.  But they are not the same thing.”  I am no less resolute in that now.

Recently, I took up the subject of tea with a guy who knows a lot about it.  Richard Rosenfeld is the owner of Two Leaves and a Bud, a premium tea purveyor out of Aspen, CO.  Rosenfeld opened his company in 2005 with the mission of bringing the experience of the gardens back to his customers.  He personally visits the farmers in exotic locals like Darjeeling, Assam and Sri Lanka and hand picks (sometimes literally) the tea he decides to sell.  It’s safe to say the guy knows his tea.

Why do you think tea has become so popular with Americans?

I believe there are two major movements which have driven the growth in tea.  One is health (and the movement away from coffee).  And the other is the availability of better tasting tea, better quality tea in the US.

You know you’re drinking a good cup of tea because it doesn’t go bitter.

How does loose tea differ from the tea that comes in bags?

I look at it as wine from a bottle as opposed to wine from a box.  You know wine from a box can be very good but generally wine fom a bottle is considered a much better wine.  But how they are different specifically, you have two major types of tea –  whole leaf tea and dust tea.  There are lots of different dust teas out there and just because we don’t do dust doesn’t mean they’re bad.  But they tend to be a little more insipid.  They have a little less depth of flavor.  A good glass of tea should have a top note, it should have middle notes and it should have a finish.

How long should you steep whole leaf tea?

For whole leaf black teas you’re in the four to five minute area.  For whole leaf green teas you are in five plus.

So what’s my secret to a perfect pitcher of iced tea?  Well I start with Two Leaves and a Bud’s Assam Breakfast Black Tea.  I prefer the loose leaf but even the bags are still better than any tea you’ve ever had before.  Then another premium ingredient, Demarerra sugar.  Demerara is so named because originally it came from sugar cane fields in the colony of Demerara in Guyana.  It is an unrefined sugar like the more common Turbinado (popularly known as Sugar in the Raw which is also a great sugar for tea).  I like Demarerra because it has the subtle notes of brown sugar and molasses.  It usually comes in large caramel colored crystals.

The final ingredient is filtered water.  I don’t want any outside flavors disrupting my perfect pitcher of iced tea.  That’s also why I never steep more than five minutes.  Many people think this will make a stronger brew but that isn’t true at all.  It will only allow more outside flavors into the tea, then you have to use more sugar to cover them up.  If you want stronger tea, use more tea leaves.