Do you take gin in your tea? This recipe will show you how...

Our November Gin of the Month, Slingsby, hails from Harrogate - which also happens to be the home of fine tea purveyors, Taylor's.

In celebration of this connection, we present to you the Slingsby Taylor Cocktail, an amalgamation of these two fine Harrogate tipples. 

The full recipe is below, but first, here's a bit of an introduction to the world of Taylor's of Harrogate.

In the late Victorian era, right around the time that the spas of Harrogate were becoming popular with foreign dignitaries, Yorkshire resident Charles Edward Taylor began sourcing speciality teas.

Along with his brother, Charles established CE Taylor & Co. (later shortened to Taylor’s) in 1886, setting up several tea and coffee houses across Yorkshire, known as ‘Kiosks’, as well as a flagship store in Harrogate, the Café Imperial (above), which has become an icon of the town.

In 1962, the owners of Betty’s Tea Rooms purchased the Taylor’s tea outlets to create the Bettys and Taylors Group, which today runs a number of tea rooms, cafés (including the original Imperial), confectionary brands and even a cooking school.

Yorkshire Tea, Taylor’s most popular brand, launched in the 1970 and is the UK’s third largest tea brand behind PG Tips and Tetley. But it has the honourable distinction of being the largest - and one of the few remaining - family-owned tea businesses in the country (both PG Tips and Tetley are owned by multinational conglomerates Unilever and Tata respectively).

Apart from Yorkshire Tea, Taylor’s offers a wide range of black and green teas, roast and ground coffees and a selection of fruit and herbal teas, the latest varieties of which are featured in your Slingsby Gin of the Month box. 

Taylor’s worked with the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens to create a line of herbal infusions that the company’s Tea Innovation Manager, Kate Halloran, calls “the purist, best tasting infusions available to buy… We know that a lot of customers find the taste of herbal and fruit teas disappointing, so we wanted to make sure ours tasted authentic and full of flavour.”

The combination of Slingsby and Taylor’s of Harrogate in our member's gin boxes this month takes the relationship between the two companies deeper as two of Slingsby Gin’s botanicals - green tea and jasmine - come from Taylor’s. What’s more, herbal teas make for amazing creative cocktails such as the Slingsby Taylor Cocktail.

Ingredients:

• 1 x Taylor's Green Tea with Strawberry and Vanilla  teabag     
• 35ml Slingsby Artisan Gin
• Vanilla pod
• Cubed ice

Preparation:

• Boil water and add the tea bag along with the vanilla pod.
• Leave to steep for 5 minutes
• Add 35ml of Slingsby Artisan Gin
• Add ice and strain into a bone china cup
• Garnish with strawberry half and one mint leaf