Sparkling Tea Winter – 5%

Sparkling Tea Vinter is sparkling chai for a toast

Sparkling Tea Vinter is a tea cocktail based on chai with white wine and fine effervescence. Cinnamon, cardamom, and clove meet robust Assam, while lemon keeps everything fresh. The winter edition from the Copenhagen family.

Sparkling Tea Vinter is the winter cuvée from the Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company, containing 5 percent alcohol. Chai, white, black, and herbal teas meet white wine, cane sugar, and lemon juice. If you are looking for something bubbly in winter that doesn't taste like sparkling wine, this is the right choice.

Cinnamon, cardamom, and a spoonful of raisins

Vinter smells like what’s on the stove in December: cinnamon, clove, cardamom, plus dried fruit.

On the palate, it remains lively because the lemon juice works against the spices and the white teas provide a delicate base layer. Spicy, velvety, and hearty, it makes its way across the palate—with 60 grams of residual sugar per liter, it is the sweetest variety from the house, and it earns that right, because spices need something to lean on.

With 14 milligrams of caffeine per 100 milliliters, it is also the most wakeful of the family. The robust black tea contributes plenty here, which is a fitting attribute for a drink meant for long winter evenings.

With duck and red cabbage, apple strudel, and cheese platters

Vinter is the food companion for everything that ends up on the table in winter, and it handles a surprising amount.

With red cabbage and duck, the clove reaches into the dish rather than standing apart. With warm apple strudel, the cinnamon complements what is already there. And on a cheese platter with nuts and figs, it finds its best match because the residual sugar balances the saltiness of the cheese.

Indian cuisine is also its terrain—no surprise for a drink whose backbone is a chai. As an aperitif for festive occasions, it certainly cuts a fine figure, precisely because it doesn't taste like sparkling wine and thus doesn't remind anyone of the usual.

The most adventurous combination was one presented by Mette Dahlgaard at Copenhagen's Gemyse: cauliflower under kimchi foam with salty, dry cheese, accompanied by Vinter. Its sweet, spicy side countered the heat and salt there—a contrast that makes both sides greater.

Serve it well-chilled at about 5 degrees, preferably in a white wine glass. If you prefer something lighter and more citrusy, the Grøn is waiting; if you want to celebrate without any alcohol at all, reach for the Blå.

An Assam from the Jamguri Tea Estate

The backbone of Vinter is a robust Assam from the Jamguri Tea Estate, a tea garden in northeastern India.

Assam is the tea upon which every decent chai is built: malty, dark, and with enough strength to carry cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, and clove without disappearing beneath them. A delicate Darjeeling would no longer be detectable here after the second spice.

An Assam requires water at nearly 100 degrees, while a white tea can barely handle 80 degrees—if you were to brew them together, one of the two would be lost. That is why the 7 tea varieties are brewed individually, each at its own temperature and for its own steep time, just as Jacob Kocemba has defined for each cuvée.

Afterward, the mixture matures in the bottle for 8 to 12 weeks and ends up under 5.5 bar of pressure. The carbonation is added, not derived from bottle fermentation—with a spiced drink, yeast would only get in the way anyway.

You can read more about the house in the portrait of the Copenhagen Sparkling Tea Company, and you can find all varieties among the Sparkling Teas with and without alcohol.

Organic inspection body DK-BIO-100 EU – Non-EU agriculture