BLUEBERRY PIE GREEN

While overindulging on baked goods might not be the greatest idea health-wise, we still find the original name for pie -coffin -a little over the top. The coffin, sometimes spelled coffyn, was a 16^th century British pie stuffed with savory meats, baked in a delicate crust with a sealed lid. Interestingly, the recipe used to make the crust remains largely unchanged since it was published in A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye in 1545:

To Make Short Paest for Tarte - Take fyne floure and a cursey of fayre water and a dysche of swete butter and a lyttel saffron, and the yolckes of two egges and make it thynne and as tender as ye maye.

By the time the Pilgrims began to set sail for the New World, coffin... err... pie recipes were common enough that they were brought over on the Mayflower. In the New World, pie-making took an innovative turn. While most recipes in the old country called for meat filling, in North America the Pilgrims were forced to adapt to the local produce shown to them by North America's native people. The first of these adaptations involved making pies filled with the wild berries that grew in abundance throughout the new colonies. One of the most popular of the new fillings was blueberry.

Today blueberries are available in every supermarket. To the Pligrims however, fresh off the boat from England, the tiny blue berries were incredibly exotic. As a pie-filler, they offered sweet, tangy depths and had the added bonus of being packed full of vitamins. (Although the Pilgrims couldn't have known this.) Over the years, as pie trends came and went, blueberry carved out a place in the great pie pantheon. Blueberry Pie flavored green tea captures all the bright berry flavor of everyone's favorite. Brew a pot today and celebrate a few hundred years of tradition.

A little about our base tea:

Pekoe Gunpowder is one of the stronger green teas on the market. During manufacture, each individual leaf is hand rolled in a process that hasn't changed for centuries. As the leaf is rolled, proteins break down and are forced to the leaf surface where they develop a full-bodied flavor. The leaf is then fired to maintain its rounded shape and nuance. Although this tea is exceptional on its own, its character lends itself well to flavoring.