Plum & Lemon Verbena Cold-Brew Tea

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Late August is still warm enough for cold tea.

Not aggressively warm.

The sort of warm that gathers along the porch boards in the afternoon and makes a glass jar seem like a perfectly reasonable piece of brewing equipment.

Today’s tea is plum and lemon verbena.

I filled the jar with cold water and added a gentle green tea. Black tea would work too, but I wanted something light enough to let the plum remain recognizable.

The plum was very ripe.

This is polite language for required immediate attention.

I sliced it thinly and dropped the pieces into the jar, where they floated for a moment before arranging themselves at different heights with no apparent system.

Then the lemon verbena.

I bruised the leaves between my fingers before adding them. Just enough to release their scent.

Freckled hands add ripe plum slices and lemon verbena to a clear jar of water and green tea on a sunny garden table.

Lemon verbena smells astonishingly bright when crushed.

Not quite lemon.

More like someone opened a window near a lemon.

I gave everything a small stir, covered the jar, and carried it out to the old garden table for a minute, because late-August light is very persuasive.

The afternoon sun passed through the glass, catching the plum skins and throwing a rosy, jewel-colored shadow across the wood. Slowly, the water began to deepen.

Gold first.

Then amber.

Then a soft plum-rose around the fruit.

I admired the jar in what I believed would remain a sunny place.

It did not.

When I returned later, the cottage’s shadow had reached halfway across the table and swallowed the tea entirely.

So I picked up the jar and accepted that the sun was not in charge of the brewing.

There was no ceremony.

The sun had moved.

The tea required the cold cupboard.

These things happen.

Several cold hours later, the tea had turned rosy amber, with the plum slices glowing darkly against the glass and the verbena drifting near the top.

I strained it over a glass full of ice.

The ice clinked.

The tea flashed plum-gold in the sun.

I added a very small spoonful of honey and a squeeze of lemon, though neither is strictly necessary. The plum gives the tea a soft fruitiness rather than a great deal of sweetness, and the verbena keeps everything fresh and green.

It tastes like late summer still has plans for the afternoon.

After pouring the tea, I tried one of the steeped plum slices.

It was mostly tea-flavored disappointment.

I ate another one anyway.