A Spot Of Tea In My Whisky

Tea-infused cocktails are all the rage right now, as we discovered recently in Darjeeling

- Riaan Jacob George

What’s the next big thing in mixology, you ask? Experts will tell you that tea — yes, you heard that right — tea is indeed the hottest ingredient on the bar counter right now.

A trend best visible at the Indian outposts of Yauatcha, the widely awarded tea and dim sum house from London. Yauatcha India’s mixologists decided to spike their cocktails with a hint of tea, and the results are marvellous. For example, the interestingly named Golden Ging Tea cocktail, is a heady concoction of passion fruit puree, ginger juice, lemon juice, passion fruit syrup, ginger ale and orange bitters. The perfect marriage, however comes in the two star ingredients infused together — second flush Darjeeling tea made by steeping 15 mg of green Pu Erh tea leaves in 700 ml of Ballantine’s Finest whisky for eight hours. This whisky-tea blend seems to have found favour among Yauatcha’s discerning diners across its Indian outlets, the mixologists tell me.