An organic caffeine-free infusion of ginger and lavender from POP TEE — an unusual pairing, warm and floral at the same time.
Dried ginger is not fresh ginger, and the difference is chemical. Fresh ginger owes its bright, sharp heat to gingerol. When ginger is dried, gingerol dehydrates into shogaol — a related compound that is substantially hotter and less bright. That is why dried ginger tastes warmer, deeper and more pungent than fresh, and why the two are not interchangeable in a recipe: swap one for the other in a stir-fry and it will be wrong in both directions. In an infusion, dried is what you want — the heat carries into hot water far better.
Lavender, and an honest word about it. Lavandula angustifolia is one of the most heavily marketed calming plants in the world, and the evidence deserves to be stated precisely. There is reasonable clinical evidence for a standardised oral lavender oil preparation, taken as a capsule at a specific dose, for anxiety symptoms. That evidence does not transfer to a cup of lavender tea, which delivers a different and far smaller quantity of a different mixture of compounds. Anyone citing lavender research to sell you an infusion is quietly swapping one thing for another. What a cup of lavender tea genuinely offers is a warm caffeine-free drink with a distinctive floral aroma, in a calming ritual — which is a real and pleasant thing, and worth having on its own terms.
Use lavender sparingly — the blend already has. It is one of the very few culinary herbs that goes from beautiful to soapy in the space of a pinch, because its aromatic compounds are extremely potent and read as perfume above a certain concentration. If you brew this too long or too strong, that is what you will get.
Ginger and lavender together is a genuinely interesting combination: the warmth from below, the floral top note above, with almost nothing in the middle. It is not a comfortable, rounded blend, and that is what makes it worth drinking.
Caffeine-free. Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.