What is not to love about a perfect cup of peppermint tea?
After Two Leaves and a Bud CEO and founder, Richard Rosenfeld and his wife were smack in the middle of a big field of peppermint, growing knee-high, Richard shared:
"Our shoes and clothes had a strong pepperminty smell for the next four days!"
Visiting a peppermint farm in Washington State
You see, Richard was visiting the farm in Eastern Washington State that grows organic peppermint for our tea company. As Richard tells it, his mission for this company is to produce the world's best tea sachet. And visiting this grower of organic herbs is part of that mission.
"I want peppermint tea to be buttery, not too peppery, smooth as opposed to sharp, still slightly astringent with nice cup color," he says. "Of course I am extra pleased that we have found that in American-grown peppermint."
Although many of us are familiar with the rainy aspects of Washington in the western portion of the state like Seattle, the eastern side of the state is hot and dry — one of the driest climate zones in the country, but it's well-irrigated from the Grand Coulee Dam. Herbs and spices grow beautifully there in huge crop circles, and our particular peppermint provider grows about 250 acres of peppermint or half of a crop circle. In fact, most of the peppermint they grow isn't for tea at all — it's harvested and used as an essential oil, an ingredient in things like shampoo and toothpaste.
Harvesting Organic Peppermint
The leaves used for our Organic Peppermint Tea are harvested by the growers at the exact peak moment of the oils maturing in the plant (as a summer crop, peppermint only has one harvest per year). They chop the whole plant and leave it lying in the field to dry. Once dried, they collect it and separate the leaves (used in our tea) from the stems (used for someone else's essential oil).
As for being organic, that comes down to lots and lots of weeding by hand, Richard says.
"It costs 10 times as much as a non-organic peppermint," he says. "They're removing one weed at a time, as opposed to spraying the field (with pesticide or herbicide) from a plane."
This tea has been one of our top-sellers since its inception. The praise we receive for this tea affirms what we already believe: this truly is the best peppermint tea.
