Our ingredients should look familiar. All of our blends are made with plants most people have heard of: peppermint, spearmint, chamomile, Yerba Mate, and hibiscus to name a few. We seldom dive deeper into what these ingredients are and why we add them to our blends. Some ingredients are there strictly for flavor or aesthetics. Others contribute supposed health benefits, too. (We can’t promise that drinking our tea will make you immortal, but many of the botanical ingredients we used are believed to have health benefits.) Some are added for all of the reasons above! Let’s dive a little bit deeper into two ingredients: Roses and Rose Hips. 

Rose Petals and Rose Hips

Rose petals and rose Hips are two ingredients we use frequently.  Don’t let their names fool you, though. Roses and rose hips aren’t both flowers. In fact, rose hips are actually the seed pod from the rose plant! This seed pod is fruit-like and even resembles a crabapple. Rose hips are often pruned from rose bushes, which is why you don’t see them often. 

Rose Hips

We don’t use rose hips too often. However, when we do, we do so for their nutritional value. They’re slightly tart and. like many other fruits, contain a good bit of Vitamin C. This tartness goes well with Hibiscus, which makes our Rose Hips and Hibiscus blend a tasty choice. Try blending this combo of botanical ingredients with Sencha for a tangy green tea! 

Rose Petals

Roses, on the other hand, don’t contribute vitamins, but instead give a unique taste and aroma. Rose petals are often used in our blends to add a delicate, floral flavor. Want to try a tea where roses are the star? Try Tuscany or Now and Forever. Both are whimsically rosy with floral notes that don’t overpower the other ingredients. 

Both roses and rose hips contribute two more things that we love in a good tea blend: Aesthetics and a flavor buffer. We often want our teas to look as beautiful as they taste and smell. That’s one of the major reasons we add beautiful botanical ingredients to our blends. We also like to add flowers to help tone down other powerful ingredients. A cup of just hibiscus would be brutally sour. But a cup of hibiscus and rose hips has just the right balance. 

Try these ingredients for yourself and see how they differ in taste, smell, and purpose. 

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