What makes tea cocktails great according to the pros behind top bars
If you're looking for a fresh way to spice up your drink order or mix things up at home with new flavors, the tea cocktail trend may be the answer.
From social media to swanky bars, tea-infused cocktails are the latest trendy beverage to make their mark.
The easy-to-try, cost-effective trend steeps additional flavor into some already favorite drinks using spirits like tequila or gin.
Videos with the hashtag "teacocktail" have amassed over 1.4 million views on TikTok with no shortage of delicious iterations of the popular drink, including riffs on an el diablo, called the el "teablo," earl grey martinis and more.
Hannah Chamberlain, who shares her handcrafted drink videos @spiritedla on the social media platform, has created colorful tea cocktails, including a red jasmine green tea and blueberry paloma as well as an earl grey old fashioned. The latter is made with an earl grey syrup, bourbon, orange bitters and lemon for garnish.
Beverage directors and bartenders across the country, like Amy Racine of JF Restaurants in New York City, have utilized tea in their cocktail menu creations.
The award-winning beverage director recently added a tea-infused libation to the cocktail menu at chef John Fraser's downtown Manhattan hotspot La Marchande. The Domaine Perdu is a margarita-inspired cocktail made with green tea-infused shochu -- a distilled rice spirit from Japan -- mezcal, white peppercorn and grapefruit.
Racine told "GMA" the citrusy and herbaceous cocktail has a touch of smoke from mezcal, adding that the "green tea-infused shochu brings additional complexity and balances the grapefruit notes’ sweetness."
"The cocktail is more multilayered than a standard Margarita or Paloma, but still makes those drinkers very happy,” she added.
Master mixologist Johnny Swet of The Skylark even has a non-alcoholic version of a tea cocktail without the booze. The gingered matcha mocktail is made with a matcha coconut syrup, fresh lime juice, topped with ginger beer and a lime wheel garnish.
When creating the drink, Swet told "GMA" he wanted "a medley of complementary flavors" but "wasn’t excited to offer ginger beer as a mocktail ... However, I sip quite a bit of matcha tea, so I thought ginger was a good match, with the flavors of coconut and lime completing this wonderfully quaffable non-alcoholic cocktail."
The trend has also made its way to the tropics, where Suzanne Navarro has shaken up the scene in Maui, Hawaii, with the island's first-ever craft cocktail bar, Esters.
Navarro told "GMA" that tea "can add complexity to your cocktails" with "a range of flavor options from fruity to herbal."
"What I like most about incorporating tea into a recipe are the bitter undertones it brings to a cocktail," she explained. "It is perfect to balance out sweeter flavors or pair with herbal liquors. You can infuse tea right into a spirit or make a syrup with it."
Her menu includes a beautiful cocktail called Madam Butterfly, made with Japanese whiskey, matcha -- which she likes for "the color and deep bitter earthy flavor" -- lemon, crème de peche, egg white and soda.
"The drink is an ode to the opera of the same name. Matcha syrup is the star of this cocktail paired with creme de peche," Navarro said. "The bitterness from the matcha is balanced by the deep fruity peach flavors of the liquor the peach draws out the subtle sweetness in the tea and it all pairs well with delicate spice of the Japanese whisky forming a balanced cocktail."
