Tea Blog

Get in the mood! Let Zhi guide your heart and your taste buds at our upcoming Valentine Tea & Chocolate Pairing.

Together, we’ll explore the relationships between two great loves: tea and chocolate at the Zhi Tea Gallery, where we’ll present four decadent courses. We’ll consider their qualities, their complements, their contrasts, and how they pair with each other.

Each coupling has romantic potential, but what pair will steal your heart?

For your tasting pleasure, Zhi is proud to partner with the culinary wizards at The Chocolate Makers Studio. This talented chocolatier is new to Austin, and you’ll be delighted with their work. You’ll also receive a special event discount for 10% off all teas in the Gallery, plus a teaZer-sized sample to take home ($4 value). Seating limited! Please RSVP today.

Sat, Feb 9.
5 pm- 6:30 pm.
$25 a person; $40 a pair.

To RSVP:
-In person at the Zhi Gallery (cash/check/cc)
-Over the phone via credit card (512.539.0717)
-Or by PayPal to jeffrey@zhitea.com

Questions? email info@zhitea.com 

Pinkies up, tea lovers!

While Zhi nevers need an official reason to steep a cup of tea, January is National Hot Tea Month. After holiday indulgences, the wintery new year is the perfect time to elevate our tea appreciation. How will you celebrate?

Here are Dr. Oolong’s suggestions to Pause, Reflect, Connect:

1) Choose a theme. This is easy and fun. Like yoga, or meditation, ask yourself what you want to align with. Do you want to simplify and relax? Are you wanting energy and focus? Are you seeking beauty and passion? There is a tea for every personality and pursuit. Explore them all!

2) Choose your teaware. Let this holiday be the right time to gift yourself your perfect tea tools. Do you like tea on the go? In the office? At home at the table or in bed? Once you know what you like, you’ll know what you need. At minimal costs, one could find the accessories to complement and fully customize your tea experiences. Make it “you!”

3) Choose your tea. Ancient Forest. Blood Orange. Silver Needle. Tropical Green. No matter what your desire, there is a tea waiting for you. All of Zhi’s teas are organic, GMO-free, gluten-free, and pesticide-free. Always.

4) Choose your guests. Whom do you want to share your moment with? Host a tea party or Afternoon Tea for a group of friends. Prefer one-on-ones? Tea for two is always a treat. Don’t forget to treat yourself. A solitary tea party is always a delightful way to romance your Self.

With Halloween a mere five days away and Halloweekend already upon us, it’s high time for a recipe that will tickle your tastebuds and spook your soul!

This autumn, we have created a concoction with our Blood Orange tea and organic pomegranate Italian soda, topped off with a hand-shaped ice block. Our favorite combination blends iced Blood Orange tea to pomegranate Italian soda at a 2:1 ratio. (Read our iced tea instructions online for best practices!)

The resulting beverage is fruity and tart without a hint of artificial flavoring – a welcome change from the usually corn-syrup-crammed holiday! To make enough punch for a crowd, pour a 750ml organic pomegranate Italian soda into a large punch bowl and brew 1500ml of Blood Orange iced tea. Add your tea to the bowl for a bloody delicious mixture! For the icy hand floating about in your cauldron, follow these instructions. This sweet and scary punch is sure to please at your big Halloween bash!

P.S. For the ghoulishly grown-up version, add vodka as you see fit.

After months of anticipation and loads of planning, the Zhi Tea 5-year anniversary week has come and gone. We wish every week were party week here at Zhi because we had a wonderful time with our friends and neighbors, celebrating a great half-decade of the best premium organic tea Texas has to offer.

The week began with an exclusive blending party, where Zhi’s own Dr. Oolong led attendees in mixing their very own Zhi Tea creations. We also had a full day of free tea that concluded with a private tea tasting, offering varieties of green, white, rooibos, and oolong teas for our friends to enjoy. The low-key gatherings ended with a flower arranging class led by Austin’s Ikebana.

Friday night marked Zhi Tea’s very first cocktail party, which featured a diverse array of tea mocktails and cocktails to please every palate. Homegrown brands like Kickin’ Kombucha, Texas Sake Co., and Paula’s Texas Orange served up some exciting new flavors to combine with Zhi teas. Plus, local band E is for Eagle brought down the house with plenty of original tunes and some fun covers to keep the crowd engaged.

Our final anniversary event, the Austin appreciation picnic, was an afternoon potluck gathering where participants baked, simmered, and stir-fried various tea-infused dishes to share with everyone involved. Guests voted for their favorites and prizes were awarded to the top four plates of the day.

With our Austin appreciation picnic coming up this Sunday, the last of our 5th anniversary events, we’re digging around for some delectable treats to cook up for the party.

We like tea-infused-just-about-anything, but we’re especially excited about this tea-infused cherry scones recipe from Tea Time magazine.

If you, too, are looking for the perfect tea treat recipe, we think this one is bound to be a crowd-pleaser. Baked with dried cherries, heavy cream, and our fair trade organic rooibos tea leaves, these scones are totally poised for greatness.

Whip up a batch for yourselves or bake some for our potluck-style picnic this weekend. Share a few with us, and we know who’s going to be our best friend at the party!

Time flies when you’re drinking tea! Can you believe it’s already been five years since we opened Zhi Tea here in Austin and began the path toward becoming Texas’s premier source of premium, organic teas?

Of course, we could never have gotten to where we are today without the support of all our favorite tea lovers in Austin, Texas and around the world. So, we’re saying a big “thank you” to all of Zhi’s friends with a week of exciting events in honor of our 5 year anniversary.

To begin, we’re offering free shipping all week long (use the code ZT5), so all our out-of-town fans can participate in the festivities. Here at our tea tasting room, we’ll first be offering a blending workshop for guests to create their own fair trade organic tea mix with black, oolong, white, green, rooibos, and herbal tea options.

Next, we’ll have a day of totally free tea and an evening tea tasting, a tea cocktail party with local live music, a flower arranging tea extravaganza, and finally an Austin appreciation picnic chock full of tea-infused treats. That’s a whole lot of tea and free stuff – a couple of the nicest parts of life, as far as we’re concerned!

So if you’re in Austin, put on your party pants and head over to Zhi Tea’s tasting room. Everyone else, don’t forget to stock up on your favorite Zhi teas with free shipping online.