Have you heard of Smith Teamaker? I first became aware of them via the sachets of tea I would sometimes get served when I moved here to Portland in 2008. The teas are sold in these sturdy lidded boxes that communicate their quality, which has made them great to pack into a gift box that looks great, is light to carry and impresses.

Over the years, Smith Teamaker has redefined tea for me the way Jacobsen Salt has redefined salt and Bee Local has redefined honey for me: that there’s so much more depth of flavor, texture, and experience to a food product than you may think. Smith Teamaker is tea that straddles tradition and the best of experiment and innovation. The flavors are familiar and nostalgic but also can be new and even revelatory. Here are three examples of how Smith Teamaker continues to lead the tea renaissance.

Barrel Aged Tea

As a huge fan of cocktails, and also of barrel aged beer, I knew when they recently announced a new trio of barrel-scented teas – in rum barrel, aquavit barrel, or whiskey barrel, that this was ha ha, my cup of tea. The three types of tea are all loose leaf and include

• White  Chrysmas – white tea scented in a White Rum barrel. This is extremely light and subtle – if you usually like your tea to be delicate, then this is for you.
  
• Mulled Black – black tea with roasted hazelnuts and cranberry fruit and spices like cinnamon and clove, then scented in an Aquavit barrel – the roasted nuts, fruit and spices give it a hint of mulled flavors as promised by the name, and the Krogstad Aquavit (from neighbor across the street, House Spirits) helped add a bit of Anise and Caraway Seed notes.
  
• Irish Moringa – moringa herbal infusion with orange peel, star anise, sarsaparilla root and vanilla bean, scented in an Irish Whiskey Barrel. My favorite of the three, but I do lean towards whiskey
  

Right now Smith is offering $2.99 flat rate shipping, so if you’re looking for a great gift you can pre-order them now (the teas above will  start to ship December 10th).

If you would like to taste it before you buy, they now have two tea Tasting Rooms open to the public:

1. 1626 NW Thurman Street (original cozy tasting room)
2. 110 SE Washington Street (newly opened today! December 2nd!
   
   The new Tasting room is double the size of the original location. The tasting room also has a view of production where they box the teas and the tea lab and has a modern, open feel!
   

One of the biggest draws for me to go to the tasting room is that you can order tea flights at the tasting room, just like at a winery or brewery, all with hot teas so you can try them out! As I already started waxing on about earlier, one of the reasons I love Smith Teamaker products so much is that you may think you know tea, but they have been really pushing the boundaries of new flavor combinations that are out of the box and re-defining what tea can be. At the tasting room, you can try these out before committing to a purchase.

Tea on Tap

For example, in addition of individual teas, you can get growlettes of their kegged tea products. Or kegs. Right now, on tap at their tasting rooms are Strawberry Honeybush Sparkling Iced Tea & Iced Masala Chai on Nitro. Personally I am still waiting for an excuse for a whole tea keg – I won’t tell you how many times I used it myself during Feast in the Media Lounge, or came back for refills at the Stumptown Coffee + Aaron Franklin BBQ event. I would pick a tea keg over a kombucha keg any and eveyr day.

In the lack of rationalization for a keg though, a growler is perfect for a smaller party – be it brunch, lunch, or dinner – to offer a gourmet non-alcoholic drink option to your guests. Look how beautiful the Strawberry Honeybush Sparkling Iced Tea is – perfect for toasting with for every family member. Meanwhile, with the addition of a scoop of Salt & Straw ice cream you can make an amazing simple dessert with the Masala Chai that is impressive. Honestly, every Smith Teamaker tea impresses.

Limited Edition Maker Series – Tea Collaborations

Earlier this year Smith Teamaker also started the Smith Teamaker’s Maker’s Tea Series. This is a tea product series where they collaborate with another local Portland tastemaker in creating a limited edition flavor tea. Smith Teamaker brings the brains of various products that can evoke flavors – the collaborator brings the perspective from the outside tea world of a flavor inspiration outside the tea world to now try to make into tea. And three times, they have really risen to the challenge.

The first, Maker No. 001, Oolong Ice Cream tastes like ice cream and fresh homemade waffle! Seriously! And it has the sweet aroma of ice cream in the nose, and a buttery round texture just like ice cream! Mindblowing!

It was a collaboration with co-founder of Salt & Straw Tyler Malek, sold out in a mere 3 days. It was so sweet when Tyler was explaining how much he learned about the magic of creating the tea with all these ingredients with head teamaker Tony Tellin, while Tony Tellin also reminisced about the initial collaborations of the teas in ice cream where the name came first and then they had to figure out how to make the flavor deliver on the names like Big Hibiscicle and Matcha Matcha Man. You could really see throughout the night that Tony is sincere in treating all his vendor partners like friends, and those who work at Smith Teamaker really feel like a family.

You can read more details if you feel like torturing yourself with something you can’t have (but it is a pretty cool story) here on the The Story of Oolong Ice Cream.

The recent release of Maker No. 002, Georgian Caravan, was a collaboration with Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place and Imperial, also sold out in a couple weeks. However, you can still get a chance to try the tea as it is being served at Imperial (I believe it also is at his Russian food DaNet pop up as well – I covered DaNet in a previous blog post). The Georgian Caravan is a smokey black tea that included hints of spices from India and China by blending teas from those countries in the custom tea mix.

Smith Teamaker Maker’s Series No. 002 Georgian Caravan with collaborator Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place, Imperial, and Portland Penny Diner – before adding the jam

In a very cool touch, the tea actually came with a little jar of huckleberry jam, which is what is used as sweetener in Georgia instead of sugar because sugar is more hard to get in Russia. The fact that they committed to making their own jam just demonstrates how committed Smith Teamaker is to creating the best product and experience they can.

Smith Teamaker Maker’s Series No. 002 Georgian Caravan with collaborator Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place, Imperial, and Portland Penny Diner – after adding the jam

Russian food is one of my favorite foods, and I remember many Chicago winters where I would go to my favorite restaurant – Russian Tea Time – and just have Russian tea and potato pancakes or pelmeni (Russian dumplings) or beet salad, which was the first time ever in my life that I liked beets. This tea reminds of those days – but even better because it has a smokier flavor. It’s really good even without the little quarter teaspoon of jam added to it.

I was really touched too when Chef Paley described how when his mother tried it, it brought up all these memories and she got into storytelling mode – if it has a Russian Mother stamp of approval, you know it’s authentic. You can read the full story about the Paley-Smith Teamaker collaboration here at The Story of Georgian Caravan

So here’s the heads up on the next Maker No. 003, which is a collaboration with Departure (and Top Chef competitor) Gregory Gourdet! This one is releasing today (December 2) and is called Phuket Fire. Signed boxes of Phuket Fire are available at Smith’s two tasting rooms and at Smith’s online store. Each box contains 15 sachets and retails for $19.49.

Phuket Fire is a pan-Asian fusion influenced by Southeast Asia where Chef Gregory explained he wanted something bold and bright with a little bit of spice – thus the blending of lime-infused hand cut pineapple (every 12 pineapples took 12 hours to prepare – and they used some hundred some pineapples!), toasted coconut, Kaffir lime and lemon myrtle, Thai peppers and ginger among the ingredients.

The tea pours a fun holiday reddish pink thanks to dark red hibiscus (apparently their experiment with beets – not so much) and I definitely get the citrusy acidic flavors almost like lemongrass from a Thai salad. You can found out more about the behind the scenes that created this tea at this link here to Smith Teamaker’s and Phuket Fire’s Full Story

It’s been amazing to see how head teamaker Tony has picked up and both followed after Steven Smith’s footsteps in creating outstanding teas while also blazing a new path by expanding into great projects to further promote tea that are out of the box. Ha ha. Sorry, I cannot stop with the puns today it seems. He brings a philosophy of perfection that balances science of knowing all sorts of ways to get different flavors to balance a tea along with the magic of pursuit of new grounds of flavors, techniques, but still balance.  They should call him the head teamaker / alchemist.

Tony Tellin showing off how teas can be be created from a lot of different ingredients in order to get the particular perfect balance of flavor

If you haven’t tried it, get yourself to the Tasting Room ASAP! Even if you have tried Smith Teamaker teas – go, because I promise they will have new flavors that you haven’t tried before.

Do any of the teas I mentioned appeal to you? What’s your favorite kind of tea? My favorite are smoked like Lapsang Souchang, and also Babaocha (Eight Treasure Tea).  I’ve also loved every tap tea I’ve tried from Smith Teamaker.

Disclosure: I attended a media Sneak Peek of the new Smith Teamaker Tasting Rom and tasted the 3 Maker teas, new Barrel Scented Teas, and draft teas, but I will always provide my honest opinion and assessment of all products and experiences I may be given. I was a huge fan even before being invited to this event. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are entirely my own.