Between 11th November and 9th December 2023, Gartencenter Meier offers you a free cup of Sirocco Tea in the centre’s own, and therefore temporary, tea lounge. (Opening times: click here / Google maps: click here)
The garden centre tea lounge is situated among the carefully sheltered outdoor plants. Keep your coat on and don’t expect any mulled wine.
Instead, what is served is a selection of Sirocco “tea bags”. Now, anyone who has visited this website before will have noticed that The Swiss Tea Sommelier usually advises against tea bags. The reason is simple: The vast majority of tea bags do not contain quality tea. Some tea bags even hide their contents. (This allows the manufacturer to fill their bags with anything cheap, and the standard particle size of tea bag contents is so small that it is referred to as ‘dust’ in the tea industry). Sirocco is different. As pointed out here (Which Tea Bag ?), Sirocco’s strong point is their see-through bag. You see what you get.
Sirocco’s see-through bag looks like it is made from plastic, but the gauze is made from corn-starch and the thread from unbleached cotton. From an environmental point of view, this is a massive plus as it makes the entire bag bio-degradable. Confusingly, however, Sirocco advise their customers dispose of used tea bags through their combustible household rubbish (in other words, even though tea bag and contents are bio-degradable, you should still chuck them in the bin for incineration as if they were not) because bio-degradable and compostable are two different kettle of fish.
To add insult to injury, the great majority of “tea bags” offered do not even contain ‘tea’ in the strict sense but ‘infusions’, which are also called ’tisanes’. (Also see: The Six Basic Types of Tea and Tea Or Not – and Camellia Sinensis if you want to dig a touch deeper). At the point of writing, the infusions offered at Meier’s Tee Lounge were: Moroccan Mint, Winter Moments (Rooibos with spices), Ginger Lemon Dream, Piz Palü (Organic Swiss herbs) and White Christmas (White tea, apple and spices).
While sitting in the tea lounge, the real tea enthusiast (this is the ‘real’ tea enthusiast with an eagerness for ‘real tea’) will notice a number of 3-year-old tea plants that have been conveniently placed nearby.
These are labelled as “Camellia Sinensis, The Tea Plant” and they only cost Sfr. 50.-. Unfortunately, the exact breed is not specified, and the garden centre cannot tell, either. Thus, it is unclear whether these are Camellia Sinensis var. Sinensis, Camellia Sinensis var. Assamica, or some other cultivar, which is most likely.
And don’t be fooled either: You will not be able to produce the Moroccan Mint, Ginger Lemon Dream or Piz Palü that you are sipping while giving it a thought whether you should buy a notoriously difficult-to-keep tea plant. (See: Grow Your Own). The good news is you will not have to start from seed.
All in All
All in all, this stall wonderfully demonstrates what a misunderstood subject TEA is. At Gartencenter Meier, you are going to be sitting in a tea lounge where you cannot drink tea because only infusions are available. These infusions come in a bio-degradable, non-compostable non-tea tea bag. Next to the seating area, the garden centre sells some kind of camellia sinensis, and while this particular variety produces tea leaves that can be made into all existing different varieties of teas, none of them have got anything to do with the infusion you are drinking. It’s all a little complicated, isn’t it ?
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