Rise Up (Organic Earl Grey and Rooibos) (7-372)

Tea brings me joy in many ways.

People interacting with or thinking about tea often brings the same.

This particular tea was born out of the combination of two of the ways that frequently spark or inspire new teas.

The first was a pair of tea surveys attached to one of the older versions of the Tea of the Month Club – where a full year could be purchased all at once.

The second was wanting to create a tea from the two surveys so the two friends could share a completely new thing inspired by the two of them.

It was created, I thought it was neat, it was sent out…  and then promptly lost in the piles of tea ideas and tea journals.

Thankfully, it was created well after the advent of the tea journals, and I liked it enough that the original test batch was consumed and replaced a couple of times, keeping it on my radar, as it were.

Fast forward a couple of years to recent times.

During the naming process for Sorry I Stabbed You, one of my long-time tea people commented on what a cool name it was and how that all by itself would practically be enough to lead to trying the tea.

Unfortunately, Sorry I Stabbed You has Lapsang Souchong as a foundation, and I knew that the human in question was not a fan of smoke in tea.

I fixated.

And I went through my mental catalog of foundational teas – both those that had been completed and those that had not, and this combination of Red Rooibos and Earl Grey practically leapt out. I thought that it would both meld well with the Lavender and Hibiscus that were the other ingredients in Sorry I Stabbed You, as well as appeal to the tastes of the aforementioned tea human.

Thus, the concept for Sorry I Stabbed You…  Again…  was born.

However, in order to make the tea, I had to finish working up the tea that was intended to be its foundation.

Rise Up progressed faster than many of my teas-in-progress do, because I was fascinated by the idea of a sequel tea, and because the test of it went over exceedingly well, which meant I very much needed Rise Up to be done.

The human who had been one of the pair who inspired the tea is deeply involved and invested in theater and we share a love of musicals.

When I was looking at the tea journal page, having rejected the original name suggestion made by THFKAMT for a laundry list of reasons, I kept coming back around to the intensity of the colour differential.

Which led to a Les Mis medley getting stuck in my head. (It started in an understandable place and then meandered around all the bits of it it likes the best.)

I reached out to the inspirational human of acting and music and teaching and kindess and we talked names briefly. I was fairly certain that one of the several name ideas that came out of the pile of excellent lyrics that comprise Les Mis would win the (currently standard) Discord tea naming poll for this needed combination of Earl Grey and Red Rooibos.

I was wrong.

When I was putting together the tea poll, my mind was riffing around the theme that had attached itself to the tea while I was thinking about various songs from Les Miz. It spit out a few bars of a song that I still have not been able to identify¹, weaving them together in a pleasant repetition that I knew was not the original, but it took a driving motivating enlivening sequence and turned it into something that would feed a lot of things – and two of the words stood out. Rise Up.

I added it to the tea naming poll almost as an afterthought. But it came out on top.

It simplified the intent of the tea’s theme – made it more accessible, and seemed deeply fitting for current times.

Now for the basics:

Rise Up is one of the teas that I can offer in both caffeinated and decaffeinated.

Organic Ingredients: Earl Grey Tea, Red Rooibos

Batch Size: 3.6 ounces, approximately 102 grams, 35+ servings of tea.

Options: Loose Tea (5 serving sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag or Tin), LatchTin), Teabags (Single Teabag, 5 serving sample (Bag or Tin), Full Batch (Bag), LatchTin)