The ritualLe rituel
How to drink it slowly.
Le rituel, en détail.
The product page gives you the four steps. This page gives them the room they deserve. There is nothing complicated here, and nothing precious. Just water, leaf, time, and a cup. If you’ve ever felt rushed by a tea bag, this is the opposite of that.
The water.
L’eau.
Bring fresh water just under boil. About 95°C. The water matters more than people think. If your tap is heavy or chlorinated, use filtered. If you boil and forget, let it cool a minute before pouring; rolling-boil water on olive leaf scalds the gentleness out of it.
Soft water is best. If you live somewhere with hard water and you brew this often, you will taste the difference between filtered and not. The leaf is forgiving in many ways. Mineral-heavy water is the one thing it cannot recover from.
Cold-brewing also works. Steep one sachet in cold water in the fridge for six hours. The flavor comes out gentler, sweeter, less tannic. Some people prefer it that way.
The vessel.
La tasse.
Porcelain, glass, or stoneware. All three work. Avoid metal. It argues with the leaf. A clear glass cup is the most generous because the brew is a beautiful pale amber-gold and there’s no reason to hide it.
One sachet, one cup. Resist the temptation to brew a whole pot for later. Olive leaf is best in the hour you make it. The flavor holds for a day in the fridge if you must, but it loses something subtle.
The cup matters less than the act of choosing one. Pick the one you actually like holding. Tea you drink from a cup you reach for is better than tea you drink from a cup that came in a set.
The wait.
L’attente.
Six minutes. Eight if you like it stronger. The leaves want time. They will not give themselves up in three. This is the part most people get wrong, because they’re used to black tea panicking after four minutes.
Olive leaf is unhurried. It will not turn bitter the way camellia teas do. You can leave the sachet in the cup for the whole drink and it only gets a little deeper. There is no penalty for forgetting it.
Use the wait. Most teas are drunk while doing something else. This one rewards being put down for a few minutes. Read a page. Look out the window. The cup will be ready when you come back.
The cup.
La gorgée.
Lift the sachet without squeezing. Squeezing pulls bitterness out of the bag’s edges and into your cup. Just lift it, let it drip a few seconds, set it aside.
Drink slowly. The cup is small for a reason. Six minutes of brewing is a long time, and the cup should reward that pace. Sip, set down, sip again. The second sip is usually the one that decides whether you’ll have a second cup.
Drink it where you can sit. We don’t recommend olive leaf as a desk tea. It rewards a window, an hour with no urgency, or the half-hour after a meal. If you’re in a rush, this is not the right tea for that day.
Six minutes is not a long time. Most things you wait six minutes for are worth less than this.
One tea. Four steps. The rest is yours.