The Roaster's Red

Notes of grenadine, peony, and golden raspberry. Crafting The Roaster’s Red began long before these leaves were ever harvested. We knew early on that we wanted a red tea with a rich aromatic base on which we could layer on a longan charcoal-roasted finish. We were inspired by Red Lily, a spring red tea in our 2020 core collection. Red Lily balanced heady aromatics with sweetness. Crafted from Jin Xuan, a hybrid developed by the Taiwanese Tea Research and Extension Station as a hardy, high-yielding plant, Red Lily was both aromatic and sweet. But what if we could also give it depth and richness with charcoal roasting? For the Roaster’s Red, we collaborated with the charcoal roaster to develop a base tea that was optimized for roasting. We delayed harvest by nearly two months to early June, taking advantage of leaf hoppers that bite the leaves, adding sweetness and depth to the base tea. Extended withering and oxidation time also gave the tea a foundation of fall fruit notes: from pomeg