Hayley Stevens, owner and founder of Saratoga Tea and Honey, said that she first started becoming interested in tea while working as an instructor at the New York French Culinary Institute, now known as the International Culinary Center.
Stevens said “when I was in Italy, I was in the Amalfi Coast of Naples and was drinking lots of espresso as I cooked, and I was coming back and I was having all of these headaches and not feeling that great and drinking really bad coffee in the classroom.”
A friend then recommended that she check out a tea shop that had opened behind the school, and suddenly going to the shop became an everyday thing for her.
She said “I was going in every day at 4:00 between my shifts and enjoying macha and feeling really good, really focused and energized, but not the same kind of anxious or jittery feeling I had with coffee.”
As she continued going, Stevens said that she became friends with the people who worked there, and they began recommending different types of tea to her.
“I started to get curious about tea, and I started to really appreciate the ritual around tea and drinking tea and preparing it for yourself and it became a social thing for me,” Stevens said.
She started Saratoga Tea and Honey in 2015, initially partnered with the owner of Saratoga Olive Oil Company. In 2018, her partner stepped out, allowing Stevens to become the sole owner.
The store now has four main sections. Along the right hand wall are a variety of teas, each with their own name card and flavor profile. In addition to traditional teas, the store has various blends, such as herbal and dessert teas.
The left side has a tea bar, for anyone who wants to sit down or order a cup of tea to go, rather than buying the tea leaves or teaware to make tea at home. For people sitting down, the bar uses glass mason jars for the cups and metal straws.
Stevens said the reason was because they are trying to avoid plastic and recycle as much as possible, and that even the iced tea to-go cups are washable and recyclable. The straws in particular are from the Earth Sunflower brand, who Stevens said was local and sourced her straws from an Indian company that employs disabled people.
A bit further back is the teaware. Stevens said that they had equipment for most any kind of tea drinker, from the person who wanted to have iced tea ready in the fridge to the person who wants something easy to make at work to those who want to go through a full tea meditation ceremony with locally-made pottery.
Finally, the backroom has various honeys and bee products. The honeys come in non-infused varieties, made via bee pollination, and infused, which are made by combining the honey with herbs and spices. Stevens said that while Saratoga Tea and Honey is not a certified organic company, the spices they use in their blends are all organic.
The backroom also has other products that incorporate the beeswax, such as lotions made with the wax, tea and extra virgin olive oil from the Saratoga Olive Oil Company.
For both honeys and teas, Stevens said that some are plentiful and so stock will essentially never run out, however others are significantly rarer and so may be out of stock for months on end, largely due to the nature of how plants mature and thus how long it takes to harvest the product.
Stevens went to Vietnam last year during a tea harvest to meet with a 41-member co-operative that was 80% women who provide her stock of Tan Huong tea.
Stevens said that the co-operative had been producing tea since 2000, and that the tea had brought them prosperity and infrastructure. The approximately 10-foot square room where a woman made and shared a cup of tea with Stevens used to be the woman’s home along with her entire immediate family.
“Today, when we went to visit it, there was a beautiful home to the side constructed with what they’ve earned selling tea,” Stevens said. “Never before did I feel it so direct and impactful. I’ve met other tea producers, but this was so emotional because you could see, so immediately, development of the tea and what us buying it - and you buying it is, what does it mean to these people.”
For more information, visit www.saratogateaandhoney.com, or call 518-584-4353.
