Brilliant Brandy Liqueurs with Tea

With things like quince, smoke, cherries, elderberries & more

When in doubt, make it into a brandy liqueur. And add tea. That’s how I like to live my life anyway. Drowning things in the stuff for the sake of, well, more brandy. I’m surrounded by stray bottles of concoctions from seasons past, though most of it ends up as gifts, especially when I find gorgeous old decanters in my near-daily jaunts in charity shops.

I don’t know why I started doing this, and I’ve started doing it with vodka too. I suppose because it’s just so easy. If I look back through the archives, vodka seems to be the spring spirit of choice, while brandy is all about the late summer going into autumn.

I’ll save the vodka recipes for when we’re on the other side of the equinox, so in this article, you will find a really rough recipe that will guide you on making:

+ Quince Phoenix Honey Orchid Oolong Tea Brandy

+ Smoky Lapsang White Tea Cherry Brandy

+ Elderberry, Black Tea, Rose and Clove Brandy

And then there’s another recipe for a traditional French liqueur called ‘Fénelon’ from the south western region that a very sexy man gave me that doesn’t have tea in but is so good it deserves a comeback as I hear it’s out of fashion though I cannot understand why. C’est délicieuse.

Fruit & Tea Brandy Recipe

My basic approach to making a tea brandy is to make a syrup from the tea and fruit in question and then just adding it to a standard French brandy. I have no exact method here but I would probably say:

Ingredients

1 litre of filtered water

1kg of fruit (if it’s quince you’re going to want to give them a scrub and maybe a light peel)

4 tbsps of tea (if you want to separate the tea from the fruit afterwards, I’d suggest using self filling bags like these ones from AVANTCHA)

250ml honey or sugar

Method

Add fruit and water to heavy based saucepan and bring to the boil before lowering to a simmer, putting the lid on and cooking until fruit is soft - probably around 20-25 minutes depending on the fruit - keep checking.

Add the tea about five minutes before the end of your simmering, making sure it’s submerged.

Turn the heat off and leave covered to cool down.

Separate fruit and tea from liquid using a fine mesh sieve

Stir honey into liquid until dissolved.

Split a bottle of brandy into two so that you have two half full bottles and top one of them up with the syrup, keeping the other for a rainy day. If you still have extra syrup, you can keep this in the fridge and use this as a cordial or poaching liquid. As for the leftover fruit, this can be enjoyed with yoghurt and granola for breakfast.

Quince Phoenix Honey Orchid Oolong Brandy

Have you ever had Phoenix Honey Orchid oolong tea? It’s such an amazing experience. It has a really complex fruity flavour (lychees, apricots), floral notes, and that gorgeous, inexplicable ‘tea’ flavour. I thought this would really complement quince as a fruit, and I wasn’t wrong. I buy nearly all of my tea from AVANTCHA (I’m biased because that’s who I work for) so you can find it there if you want to give it try (They call it Phoenix Dan Cong, or their Organic Wuyi Oolong would taste good too).

Tea is such an incredibly diverse beverage, but also makes an excellent natural flavouring. Have you played with it much? I encourage that you do! Like using it to flavour crème brûlée.

Pic for The Goods Shed, Canterbury

Elderberry, Black Tea, Rose & Cloves Brandy

I like to think of this one as a medicine, which means I am totally allowed to drink a spoonful in the morning during the autumn/winter seasons to ward off any bugs. Following the basic recipe, I also add a few drops of rosewater and 8 cloves during the tea stage. For the black tea, I use Organic Japanese Benifuuki because it has a really good natural muscatel quality that I think adds really nice structure to brandy liqueurs. I think if you kicked out the cloves and rose then a really good Earl Grey would work too. Imagine that. Elberberry and bergamot.

Smoky Lapsang White Tea Cherry Brandy

This tea is INCREDIBLE. If you like Lapsang Souchong (a smoky black tea) then you will probably love this too. It’s an organic white tea that’s been slowly smoked over pine wood - it’s called Organic Lapsang Bai Mu Dan so you get all of the honey and floral notes from the white tea, and all of the alpine smoke flavour too. I smoked some trout in it recently, too.

As for the leftover cherries, you could also cover them in any leftover syrup and brandy and leave them in airtight jar in the back of the cupboard until Christmas.

Sexy French Fénelon

If I had known how expensive this project was going to be, I might have reconsidered but at least a lot of my Christmas presents are sorted as a result, though I already let my mother and my neighbour Alun have a taste and they both haven't stopped near begging me for more. Here’s how to make 1 litre of Fénelon - and still have plenty of the ingredients left to make more.

Mix all of these ingredients et voilà!

650ml Cahors Red Wine (I get this one from Waitrose)

200ml Creme de Cassis (I use Giffard)

100ml Walnut Liqueur (I made my own once but it tasted shit so just let the awesome Thom Eagle take care of you with his small batch Nocino from his brand Rovo)

50ml Armagnac (good quality)

Please note, all pictures are generally mine unless stated otherwise. Clicking them will take you to my Instagram where you can follow along with whatever is going on at the market, in the Kentish countryside, or in my kitchen. Come say hi.

And as for the tea brandies, which one would you like to try most? Drop me a message in the comments and let me know. I’m off for a medicinal elderberry brandy injection.