THE MAGIC OF TEA BLENDING
I started making premium organic hemp-based tea blends for women entrepreneurs a few years ago as part of my mission to help women entrepreneurs prioritize self-care. It’s my belief that in order to create a sustainable business you have to put yourself and your self-care first.
Running a business takes a lot of energy — energy which gets invested into things other than your own wellbeing. To be able to sustain it, it’s crucial to factor in time for deeply nourishing activities that refill your own cup, a lesson particularly important for highly ambitious women.
It doesn’t need to be a major thing like an expensive spa day; it could be just sitting down for ten minutes with a cup of tea and not doing anything else at the same time. The additional self-love means a better, more profitable business, which allows you to have the impact you want in the world.
So without further ado, here’s the process I use to create new tea blends.
THE BEGINNING
It all starts with an intention. Every time I create a new blend, whether it’s for a bespoke client, my range of teas or just as a creative outlet, there’s always an intention. The intention could be anything; something very specific or something more general, but this is your guiding light for the creation process.
After that I think about purpose; if it’s for a client I ask myself what my client wants their customer to feel, what part of their branding should it embody, what message should they get when they look, smell, taste and feel the tea.
If it’s a blend for me I ask myself what I need right now and try to connect to my personal needs at that time. And if it’s for my range I ask myself how I want people to feel — how I want my blend to help people.
Intention and purpose are the foundations for the blend creation. The next steps are…
INTUITION AND SELECTION
Once I’m clear on the why of what I’m making I move into the research phase, which is twofold; both external and internal.
– Internal: I have a fair amount of herbal knowledge when it comes to teas so I ask myself what herbs I know would serve this intention
– External: I utilise my resources, books etc, to find the herbs that can answer the intention and purpose
The next phase involves harnessing my intuition to help with the selection. Intuition is infused into everything I do, but at this phase of this process, it’s particularly useful. There are thousands of herbs that can help with common ailments and narrowing down the potential candidates for my blend is something I rely on intuition to help me with.
My intuition will lean towards a certain herb as well as others that can be paired with it to create the experience I’m aiming for. This informs my primary selection and is a more aligned way to choose a blend for me than purely rational selection.
After selection, there’s the question of proportions, and this is another thing I use my intuition for. In a way, this is the most crucial part of the process because you can have the perfect combination of herbs but if the proportions are off, your blend will be off.
THE FINAL CUT
Once I have the initial proportions I blend the herbs and do trials. I look at it, I smell it, I taste it and I feel it. These four elements of the blending process need to answer my intention and purpose, so if any of them are not working when I test the blend I go back to the selection phase and try a different proportion.
Often I get it right straight off the bat, which indicates that my intuition really works for me with this process. With bespoke clients, I will send a sample so they can ascertain if they feel it’s what they’re looking for, but I rarely need to make a change.
I feel like this process could be adapted to many creative endeavours; it requires an initial vision, is a mix of rational and intuitive, involves testing and iterating and the final testing via the senses to see if the vision has been made manifest through the tea blend.
Why not give it a go yourself?
Much love,
Amandine xo
P.S. If you are looking for some really really nice gifts, how about becoming my bespoke client? Go ahead and book a FREE 30 minute discovery call and get the tea vibes going!
