Par Avion Tea
rose quartz tea with rose petals and rock sugar "jewels"
"This is gonna be awesome, this is gonna be awesome, this is gonna..." We drink a fair amount of tea in my home, but this was the first batch we ever made where my 11-year-old daughter sat next to the pot and watched the tea steep, singing softly about how awesome it was going to be the whole entire length of the brew.
Par Avion Tea
The tea was Par Avion Tea's Unicorn Tears, a green tea made with blue pea flower, rose hips, and blue butterfly pea flower petals. The reason it was going to be awesome was that upon squeezing in lemon, this very green tea was going to turn pink.
Par Avion Tea
Unicorn Tears Tea, before lemon!
When it was ready, we brought it into the light, called her brother over, got my phone ready to capture the moment, and squeezed a lemon section. "Oh, awesome!" both kids shrieked. "Did you see that?"
Par Avion Tea
Par Avion Tea, the lemon begins!
I did. I saw it with my own eyes. It was, in fact, awesome.
And it's as much fun as you can have with a cup of tea, I'd venture. The story behind the way blue butterfly pea flowers react to acid is interesting, but the story behind Par Avion tea is even more interesting. So I called up founder and CEO Alexandra Mysoor, who now lives in California, to learn how someone who grew up in Shoreview, Minnesota started a tea company.
Par Avion Tea
Unicorn Tears tea, final stages after added lemon
Turns out Alexandra's Gujarati family emigrated from Mumbai before she was born, landing first in Texas, and then, when the oil industry briefly busted, in Shoreview. "Within our first week of moving in, I'll never forget our neighbor, Carol Olson, came over, she had these big rosy cheeks and brought an apple pie. My mom invited her in and made chai. That's why I think of my Minnesota childhood as chai-and-apple-pie." It was really good chai, as Alexandra's grandmother would regularly send the family care-packages of spices and tea from India, and young Alexandra's favorite thing to do was to run to the mailbox at the end of the long driveway, looking for the wax-sealed packages from India, stamped with the air-mail words "par avion."
That chai was a part of her life growing up, including when she became a cheerleader for the Mounds View High varsity basketball team. "I did it on a bet because my arch-nemesis told me I couldn't make it, and I thought: I'll show you." After high school, Alexandra went to college at Berkeley in California, taking tea classes just for fun, and made tea for friends, just for fun. She graduated knowing she wanted to have some sort of company, but as the years passed she started studying tea more closely, and turned her eye to the American tea market.
"Did you know that 80% of tea drinkers in the U.S. are women?" she asked me. I did not. "Did you know that almost no tea-company presidents are women?" I didn't know that either (but thought of our own Mindy Kelly behind local Mrs. Kelly's Teas and thought how lucky we were). "I really love Sephora," Alexandra told me. "It's one of my favorite stores, all that fun packaging, the fun product names, how it makes you feel. Tea is also self-care for a lot of women. But tea-culture can be really intimidating, and a lot of tea-houses and tea-brands, it's like they're trying to create a fidelity to somewhere else, maybe in Asia, maybe who knows. But no one has pushed the boundaries in so long to create a modern American tea culture."
Until now?
In addition to the color-changing Unicorn Tears, Par Avion has bunches of other all-American, Insta-worthy teas: Some have glitter, some have fruits and berries to make them bright pink or purple, some are designed for tea lattes and are made with cocoa and white chocolate chips, some come with rock candy "jewels" mixed in with the black tea. I tried the rose one with bright red jewels of rock candy, and it was fun! First it was sparkly, then the jewels dissolved and I had a sweet black tea that was prettily rose-scented, and went nicely with milk. It seems like a good tea for tea parties or self-care. Alexandra told me that Richard Branson serves it on his private Caribbean retreat, Necker Island, iced.
All private islands and self-care routines considered, I can faithfully report that the Par Avion color-changing tea ruled, and if you're interested in getting in on the ground floor of the Sephora of American tea brands, go to Russel + Hazel in the North Loop, Al Fresco Casual Living in Stillwater, or find Par Avion Tea online or in one of the hundreds of gift-shops in which the tea is now carried. When you do, you can ask yourself the question: Is this what tea looks like when it's disrupted by a Mounds View High cheerleader who's equal parts girlie-girl and entrepreneurial-disrupter?
