Tea and food pairings: which tea to choose to accompany your festive meals?

The benefits of tea

Tea can be an ideal beverage for your festive meals, for a number of reasons.

Originality

First of all, for taste and originality. Enjoying a cheese platter for the first time with a Darjeeling primeur, with its floral and fruity notes, such as our Tara's Offering, can be a real revelation. A grand cru with assertive, complex flavours has what it takes to stand up to our specialties, even those of the most "terroir".

The ability to modulate intensity and temperature

Tea also offers the unique possibility of modulating infusion intensity and temperature. Depending on the dish and the season, having the option of "spiking" your tea and drinking it hot, cold or even iced opens up new perspectives.

Variations in temperature allow you to play with the texture of food in the mouth, to the point where it melts deliciously under the palate..

A healthy, economical beverage

Tea is a healthy beverage that hydrates and aids digestion, especially when drunk hot, and allows you to leave the meal feeling clear-headed..

The possibility of infusing the leaves of a grand cru several times also makes it possible to enjoy a beverage that evolves in taste, and proves economical in view of the number of infusions possible. All you need is hot water to hand, in a large isothermal bottle.

The basic principles

To get started, you simply have to remember that there are three main ways of approaching things..

Play the :

• Resonance, by combining common flavours that echo each other;
• Complementarity, by blending flavours that are different, but naturally associated;
• Contrast, by creating real opposites that end up finding pleasant agreements on the palate.

To achieve these associations, it's not so much the type of dish that's important, but its dominant aroma. With fish accompanied by a lemon sauce, for example, it's wiser to consider the zesty notes of the sauce rather than the flavours of the fish, which in this case will not be predominant. Our Finest Earl Grey black tea can be a great complement here, for example, with the resonant effect of the lemon-bergamot pairing.

Suggested pairings for your festive meals

First course

To accompany your foie gras (traditional or vegetarian version) or smoked salmon, we recommend a powerful, fruity Darjeeling black tea (summer or autumn harvest) that will stand up to these two must-haves of our festive meals. Our Seeyok Summer Blossom FTGFOP1 SF, with its fruity notes reminiscent of ripe red grapes and a hint of honey, is a great option.

Another complementary and gourmet suggestion is Hong Bi Luo, a superb black tea from Hubei, sweet and complex, with notes of warm plums, orange and mocha. Divine!

If you're a fan of grilled fish, seafood or sushi, we highly recommend Tamaryokucha, a lightly roasted, twisted Japanese green tea that's particularly mild and aromatic, or kuki hojicha, also a green tea made from roasted twigs and stems, whose flavours of toasted bread and hazelnuts, vegetal and fruity notes are particularly enjoyable with a meal. These two green teas are also a good choice to accompany a salad of green lentils and smoked tofu.

Finally, why not try a green tea flavoured rich in flavours? Songe du colibri, particularly appreciated for its freshness and originality, is the perfect accompaniment to a citrus sea salad, with its complementary notes of lemon and basil.

The main course

If your main course includes fish or shellfish with iodine notes, Gyokuro Karigane Japanese green tea with its velvety liqueur and complementary vegetable and marine flavours will bring refinement to the meal.

For lovers of fish in court-bouillon, we recommend our Sencha Fukamushi, a Japanese green tea steamed longer than usual, with a particularly supple liqueur. Excellent with pike-perch matelote!

As an accompaniment to meat in sauce, a black tea like our Spring Thunder FTGFOP1 FF, with its intense, complex notes of malt, camphor, myrrh and musk, will bring out the flavours of your dish's patiently simmered ingredients.

A seitan dish with mushrooms or a game dish with mushrooms will pair perfectly with our Curly Black, a powerful black tea with notes of cooked fruit, wildflower honey, cinnamon and vanilla crème brûlée.

To accompany a mushroom risotto, you can opt for our Pu'er Palace. The undergrowth notes of this pu'er from Lincang in Yunnan resonate perfectly with a dish with forest accents.

Finally, with a pumpkin risotto, opt for Rosé cha, a highly original Japanese dark tea that forms a gourmet and complementary pairing with its flavours of milk caramel, praline peanut and subtle floral notes of rose.