To our knowledge, we are the first Tea BAR in Nashville.  There are many tea rooms in the city which also offer a sampling of lunches and other foods.  We are all about great tasting tea made just the way you want it.  (What IS a tea BAR?  Well, sort of a "Starbucks experience" except for TEA, if you will)  Our list of teas, herbs and tisanes is a long one.  Customers can come in and sit with their tea or grab a cup on the go.  All are brewed by you, giving you control over the ingredients you would like to add to your blend.  Healthy snacks, biscotti, cookies and powerbars are available as well.

There are plenty of infusers, tea bags and tea sacks, tea pots and tea accessories found for sale in the tea bar -- something to suit everyone's personal brewing style.

SEE OUR FULL LIST OF AVAILABLE TEAS AND HERBS

ABOUT THE TEAS WE OFFER - THE CATEGORIES

Rooibos  - (Afrikaans for red bush; scientific name Aspalathus linearis) is a member of the legume family of plants and is used to make a tisane (herbal tea). The product has been popular in South Africa for generations and is now consumed in many countries.

Rooibos is only grown in a small area in the Cederberg region of the Western Cape province. Generally, the leaves are oxidized or fermented to produce the distinctive reddish-brown color, but unfermented "green" rooibos is also produced.

In South Africa it is more usual to drink rooibos with milk and sugar, but elsewhere it is usually served without. The flavor of rooibos tea is often described as being sweet (without sugar added) and slightly nutty. Preparation of rooibos tea is essentially the same as black tea save that the flavor is improved by longer brewing. The resulting brew is a reddish brown color, perhaps explaining why rooibos is sometimes referred to as "red tea."

Rooibos is becoming more popular in Western countries particularly amongst health-conscious consumers, who appreciate it for its high level of antioxidants and lack of caffeine.

Although rooibos was first reported in 1772 by botanist Carl Thunberg, the Khoisan people of the area had been using it for ages and were aware of its medicinal value. The Dutch settlers to the Cape adopted rooibos as an alternative to black tea, an expensive commodity for the settlers who relied on supply ships from Europe. Until the 19th century, however, Dutch usage of the tea was minimal.

In 1904, Benjamin Ginsberg (a Russian settler to the Cape and descendant of a famous tea family) realised the potential of rooibos and began trading with the local Khoisan people who were harvesting it. He sold his "Mountain Tea" to settlers in the Cape and shortly became the first exporter of rooibos using contacts from the family tea business.

In the 1930s, Ginsberg convinced a local doctor to experiment with cultivation of the plant. The attempts were successful, which led Ginsberg to encourage local farmers to cultivate the plant in the hope that it would become a profitable venture. The first attempts at large volume cultivation were a disaster due to the small size of the seeds. They are no larger than a grain of sand and so were difficult to find and gather. This resulted in the seeds soaring to an astounding £80 a pound, which was far too expensive for local farmers.

Fortunately for Ginsberg, who employed collectors of the seeds, one woman had found a rather unusual source of supply. While other collectors only brought in matchbox-sized quantities of the seed, she continually delivered large bags and was eventually persuaded to share her secret. She chanced upon ants dragging seed one day, while she was searching for the minute seeds. She followed their trail back to their nest and, on breaking it open, found a granary.

Since then, rooibos has grown in popularity in South Africa and has recently started to gain momentum in the worldwide market.

Green Tea - Why don't other Chinese teas have similar health-giving properties like Green Tea? Green, oolong, and black teas all come from the leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant. What sets green tea apart is the way it is processed.  Green tea leaves are steamed, which prevents the EGCG compound from being oxidized. By contrast, black and oolong tea leaves are made from fermented leaves, which results in the EGCG being converted into other compounds that are not nearly as effective in preventing and fighting various diseases. 

Green tea (ryokucha) is so ubiquitous in Japan that it is more commonly known as "tea" (ocha) and even "Japanese tea" (nihoncha). Types of tea are commonly graded depending on the quality and the parts of the plant used. There are large variations in both price and quality within these broad categories, and there are many specialty green teas that fall outside this spectrum. The very best Japanese green tea is said to be that from the Uji region of Kyoto. Shizuoka Prefecture is also famous for its green tea.
 

Black tea is a "true" tea (i.e. Camellia sinensis) made from leaves more heavily oxidized than the white, green, and oolong varieties. Black tea is generally stronger in flavor and contains more caffeine than the more lightly oxidized teas.

In Chinese and culturally related languages, black tea is known as red tea, perhaps a more accurate description of the color of the liquid. However, in the western world, "red tea" more commonly refers to South African rooibos tea.

While green tea usually loses its flavor within a year, black tea retains its flavor for several years. For this reason, it has long been an article of trade, and compressed bricks of black tea even served as a form of de facto currency in Mongolia, Tibet and Siberia into the 19th century. Traditionally, black tea was the only tea known to Western culture. Although green tea has been gradually increasing in popularity, black tea still accounts for over ninety percent of all tea sold in the West.

The expression black tea is also used to describe a cup of tea without milk (served black), similar to coffee similarly served without milk or cream. In the United Kingdom, black tea is not commonly consumed black, as adding milk is the common practice.
 

Herbal Tea - A tisane, ptisan or herbal "tea" is any herbal infusion not made from the leaves of the tea bush (Camellia sinensis). The English word "tisane" originated from the Greek word πτισάνη (ptisanē), a drink made from pearl barley.

Tisanes can be made with fresh or dried flowers, leaves, seeds or roots, generally by pouring boiling water over the plant parts and letting them steep for a few minutes. Seeds and roots can also be boiled on a stove. The tisane is then strained, sweetened if so desired, and served. Many companies produce herbal tea bags for such infusions. The term is most often used to refer to linden (lime leaf) tea.

Many blends of real tea are prepared by adding other plants to an actual tea (black, oolong, green, yellow or white tea); for example, the popular Earl Grey tea is black tea with bergamot. Such preparations are varieties of tea, not tisanes.

Our Nashville yoga students love herbal tea blends.  It's not uncommon to see someone brewing a cup of tea in one hand with a yoga mat in the other.