Tea Anyone?

I own a coffee pot, but it's stored in one of the cabinets over the fridge. The ones where you keep things you never use. The only time it gets taken out is when I have company who depend on their morning coffee.

I'll drink tea year-round though.

During my recent visit to Colorado my friend Amy and I visited the Celestial Seasonings plant for a tour. Check out these cool teapots they had on display.

They had some neat tea cups too. Although we didn't use them for our tea samples, of course. I learned a few cool things about the company while there.

One thing was that the cups for the tea samples were regular mugs so that they could be washed and reused (rather than disposable cups). Another way they help save the environment is by not putting the string on the tea bag, apparently leaving off that little string saves several thousand trees a year.

Also, several of Celestial Seasonings products are not actually tea, it doesn't have the tannins that are in tea. Most of the teas sold by Celestial Seasonings are actually herbal mixtures. Apparently there is a law in the U.S. that prohibits calling something tea unless it is actual tea. That's why it says caffeine free herbal tea on the package.

Cool fact: One of the main ingredients in several of the teas is hibiscus. Like the ones on the tree I have that I mentioned in this post.

Enjoying our tea!

There were no pictures during the tour, but my favorite part was the Mint Room. The smell was so strong that my congestion cleared right up. Our guide also said that you could get a similar result by tossing a bag of their peppermint tea on the shower floor. Their Mint Magic tea makes a good air freshener in the car.

 

Celestial Seasonings mascot,
the Sleepytime Bear.

The tour was a lot of fun, I loved getting to try the sample teas--there were probably about 15 cold or hot teas that we could try before the tour. Then there were so many options in the gift shop afterward available for purchase. They also had tea baths with different herbs, I didn't buy one because they were pricey and you have to brew them BEFORE you added them to the bath. Sounded like too much work. But I liked the idea.

Are you a tea devotee? Or do you crave coffee?