This site uses Amazon Affiliate Links. If you click on an Amazon link from this page and make a purchase, I will – at no cost to you – earn a small commission.
This lavender Earl Grey from Rosie & Java combines two of my favourite things – Earl Grey blends and bunging flowers in things. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a tea with lavender in it before which is surprising, given my enthusiasm for rose and hibiscus black tea combos.
The lavender flower flavour here is quite subtle but it’s definitely there, adding its soothing presence to the bergamot oil-infused Chinese, Indian and Ceylon tea leaves.
Lavender has long been a favourite fragrance of producers of soap, skin creams and those soft toys you can put in the microwave. It is also associated with a number of health benefits. I consulted my Culpeper Herbal to see what the 17th century herbalist and astrologer had to say about it. (One might argue that this isn’t the most up-to-date of medical resources, but realistically, how much is likely to have changed in the last 400 years?)
Culpeper tells us that lavender should be used in the treatment of “giddiness or turning of the brain” and “tremblings and passions of the heart”. He also advises taking the powdered leaves at breakfast to stop “the running of the reins in men and whites in women”, a confusing combination of words that immediately made me think, “Is that a sex thing? It sounds like a sex thing.” Further investigation has confirmed that yes it is. Culpeper is talking about the symptoms of syphilis.
Obviously I can’t attest to the efficacy of treating your syphilitic discharges with lavender but I’m sure that, at the time, it was preferable to the doctors’ usual prescribed course of ingesting a whole load of poisonous mercury – a somewhat terminal treatment for STDs.
Talking about syphilis in a tea review is quite a digression even for me, so I should attempt to get things back on track and discuss Rosie & Java’s Blue Lavandula tea, which really is a very nice blend. Its combination of three different kinds of tea, lavender blossom, blue cornflowers and bergamot produce a tea that I could happily drink all day.
Also, excitingly, I bought this tea from an actual bricks-and-mortar teamongery. Rosie & Java is a lovely little shop in Richmond. My daughter moved to the area during lockdown and this weekend I visited her new flat for the first time. We had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant, took a walk around Richmond Park in the sunshine, and then rounded the day off by buying a ridiculous amount of tea at a specialist tea and coffee merchant. If there’s a better way to spend a Saturday, I don’t know what it is.
Today’s featured book is Culpeper’s Complete Herbal.
