Tea Cocktails in Fashion at Red Dress Ball

Karli Edmondson
Posted: Monday, June 21, 2010 12:54 pm

Tea Cocktails in Fashion at Red Dress Ball
 Tea cocktails from boutique tea estates were served in style to the fashion world and VIP guests at the Red Dress Couture Ball on Friday 18th June 2010, supported by Chanel, Vera Wang & Anya Hindmarch.

 
Top designers Chanel, Vera Wang, Nicole Farhi and Anya Hindmarch were just some of the top fashion houses exhibiting their designs at the Red Dress Couture Ball in Oxford on Friday.
 
The ball, which took place in Oxford’s divinity schools, was in aid of charities H.E.L.P Malawi and Teach A Man To Fish. Each designer exhibited and auctioned a red couture dress in support of these charities and their causes.
 
In fashion on the night were the boutique tea cocktails, created especially for the occasion, using organic green tea from the Paksong Tea Garden in Laos. Paksong is a little-known boutique tea estate that produces limited quantities of fine tea each year. The Paksong Excelsior Green tea that was used was grown from the seeds of wild tea trees from the Lao-Chinese border.
 
The ‘Wild Excelsior Tea Cocktail’ is a creation of head bartender Zeb Cohen and his team and designed to complement the flavour profile of the tea without overpowering it. Zeb said about the cocktail:
 
“When working with a premium tea like this, it was important to keep the tea as the central flavour and use the other flavours to compliment and enhance it. The dry leaves have a deep strawberry jam complexity and the sugar reduction works to add sweetness. The freshness of the mint and cucumber lightens the drink and plays against the buttery undertones present in the tea.”
 
Jameel Lalani of the tea trading company Lalani & Co, who import and distribute Paksong’s teas, said:
 
“There are some excellent teas being produced in the small boutique estates like Paksong where the focus is on achieving excellent flavour rather than high production output. Tea cocktails are an exciting new trend at the moment and we’re delighted at how popular they were on the night. We were also very pleased to be able to contribute to the event and support the Red Dress Ball and these very worthwhile causes. Ethics is crucial to us in the tea trade. Buying high quality leaf teas gives producers a more respectful price and a market for their expert tea production. All our teas are traceable back to the estate and, where possible, are Fairtrade certified.”