Ostensibly, liquor and tea are on opposite ends of the libation spectrum. It's hard to envision a bar fight erupting after one too many chamomiles, nor would we think to pair whiskey and crumpets.
Notwithstanding reductive caricatures, could it be that tea and spirits aren't that dissimilar?
"Tea has just as much complexity as a fine Scotch," insists David Duckler, founder of Verdant Tea in Minneapolis' Seward neighborhood.
Then perhaps it shouldn't be shocking that incorporating tea — the choice beverage of old Chinese men and British women with elaborate hats — is an easy and effective way to boost a cocktail.
"I love working with tea," said Jesse Held, chief cocktailer at Parlour, Coup d'état and Marche. "Tea has such a complexity where you don't need a lot of different ingredients to achieve a pretty cool cocktail."
The cocktail czar's various drink menus include a few tea-infused tipples, from an Earl Grey tequila Old-Fashioned to gin and vodka sour riffs leveraging rooibos and green tea, respectively. While most infusions take six to 10 days, Held said tea-steeped hooch is usually "good to go" in under an hour. Clear spirits such as vodka and gin tend to absorb outside flavors better than the brown stuff, with the gin-and-tea coupling being particularly popular.
"A lot of the subtleties of tea play well off of specifically gin, because gin has a lot of the same characteristics as the tea," Held said. "Yeah, it's juniper-forward, but there's also lemon peels, coriander and cubeb berries — all these little intricate subtle flavors in gin as well."
It's far from a sophisticated "mixology" joint (no litany of apothecary bottles here), but the Aster Cafe has long dabbled with tea infusions. The St. Anthony Main restaurant's general manager, Michelle Coy, said patrons often inquire about the concoctions, which sit in large glass decanters behind the bar.
