Continuing our cold weather = tea weather theme, I wanted to spotlight the Choice Organic Teas.  Recently Whole Foods Market launched four new tea items from Choice, a new line of full leaf teas, which, if you recall my last post, is one of the hottest trends in the tea category.  The tea experts at Choice use hand-picked whole leaf teas, flavorful herbs, and delicate flowers in a biodegradable tea pyramid pouch.  The pouch and the pungent tea leaves are the precise combination to create the prefect brew.  The new products are a mix of traditional methods and flavors combined with high quality tea.

The new Jasmine Green Tea is a classic.  Its leaves are hand-picked on small Chinese tea gardens, quickly pan-fired, then blended with fresh jasmine blossoms that are removed once they’ve imparted their essence.  Estate Blend Darjeeling features leaves that are hand-picked at the height of the season in the famed hills of India’s Darjeeling region. The English Breakfast is an old favorite with rich taste that comes from teas that hail from Vietnam and India’s Assam region. The Chamomile Citrus comes from whole yellow chamomile flowers harvested in Egypt while the orange peel and pink hibiscus add a light, fruity essence to this caffeine-free blend. However, the fact that this is great tasting tea is not what makes these Choice products so special.

At Whole Foods Market, we have a fantastic selection of some of the finest teas available so it should come as no surprise that the new teas from Choice please the palate.  What makes this tea special is the socially responsible aspect of how these products are sourced.  All of these teas mentioned are Fair Trade Certified by Transfair USA.  In fact, Choice Organic Teas has been one of the companies in the U.S. tea industry at the forefront of the Fair Trade movement since 2000.   Because their new products are certified Fair Trade…actually almost half of all their products are Fair Trade certified…they can be listed under the Whole Trade Guarantee.  Whole Foods Market donates 1% of all sales of products covered under the Whole Trade Guarantee to the Whole Planet Foundation, who then gives micro loans to people in developing countries. This is changing people’s lives.

To check out any of the previously mentioned Choice Organic Teas, just go to your favorite Whole Foods Market Store and grab one off the shelf.  Not only will you be satisfying your tea craving, you’ll be supporting socially responsible products as well.