Celestial Seasonings - Tea Tasting & Tour
With my mom, dad and my brother coming into town for Thanksgiving I wanted to show them highlights of Boulder and a tour with something warm to sip is perfect for visiting Californians in 'cold' Boulder, Colorado.
We started our Wednesday before Thanksgiving, with a quick shopping trip for last minutes things for Thanksgiving, a small tour of local spots that I frequent and then off to North Boulder to where the Celestial Seasonings Factory is located.
Their tours are free and start at the top of every hour. We got their a bit early which was perfect timing for us to do some tea tasting before the tour started.
Our favorite seemed to be the Sugar Cookie Tea.
The tour started with a little movie/documentary of the start and how Celestial Seasonings got started. They also pointed out where they travel to get a lot of their different plants, berries and leaves for making tea. After the movie we were not allowed to take any more photos. I was able to snap a quick shot of mom and dad in their hair nets. We all looked really dumb, but at least we looked dumb together.
The tour took us through their warehouse where you would constanly smell different scents every other breath. It was fun to see bags of ingredients from China, Indonesia, Mexico and Peru all in one place. They have a mint room that we went into and WOW that was a strong smelling room. They had a trivia question while in the mint room and of all people mom got the right answer and won the 'I survived the Mint Room' t-shirt.
The next area we went through was their packaging, boxing and shipping area. Watching the machines do all these different things was incredible and interesting. The down side to the tour was how loud it was in the factory which made it hard to hear what our mini tour guide was saying.
At the end of the facorty we got a free package of Peppermint Tea along with ideas of what do with tea besides having just a hot cup of tea. Trying the tea as iced tea, mixing it into a brownie mix for Peppermint Brownies, adding to stuffing and spicing up a chicken recipe (a course depending on the flavor of tea).