I try not to play favorites with my tea varieties, but I will admit a weakness for our Dragon Green Tea. Not only is the tea delicious and distinctive, but the design on the can is also fun and unique. Longtime Honest Tea fans will recall that our Green Dragon Tea carried a beautiful design based on a Chinese rubbing. In fact, our Operations Director (for both Honest Tea and Just Ice Tea), Ed Castro, loved the design so much that he tattooed the image on his chest.
Honest Tea’s Green Dragon Tea was a longtime popular variety – the combination of green tea and passionfruit was first brought to market in 2003. That variety, along with Peach Oo-La-Long, were our very first “Just a Tad Sweet” varieties. When we first presented Green Dragon to our partners at Big Geyser, I remember the CEO, Lewis Hershkowitz asked me, “What does a dragon taste like?” It was a fair question, but now with our Dragon Green Tea, I have a good answer to that question – “It tastes a lot like Honest Tea’s Green Dragon!” For this updated recipe, Chef Spike blends a crisp green tea from Cha De Magoma Mozambique with passionfruit juice concentrate from Peru.
We knew the dragon visual would present us with the opportunity to create a distinctive and memorable can design. Our designers at T Creating did not disappoint – we love our dragon so much that we all showed up in Dragon jackets when we launched the tea at Expo West. We will be holding a contest to officially name our dragon – stay tuned for that.
When we were developing this new tea in 2023, we hadn’t taken into account that 2024 would be the Year of the Dragon, according to the Chinese zodiac. But that coincidence has made it all the more fun to bring to market, and we have embraced our dragon as a symbol of auspicious power, strength, and good luck. The limerick for this one was easy:
Our tea is grown in Mozambique.
Our passion for Fair Trade makes it unique.
Dragon inspired,
We’ll never get tired
Of taking your thirst to new peaks.