Spirit infusion kits raise the bar for home mixology

Packaged in a mason jar with a piece of twine tied into a bow around the opening, the farmers market presentation suggests sweet jams or preserves inside. Twist open the lid and instead find an aromatic blend of dried fruits and spices ready to be soaked in your spirit of choice. This is the deceptively simple concept behind DRANKSbyday, with a vision of curating refreshing cocktails and mocktails at home.

“DRANKSbyday offers an all-natural craft cocktail experience, bringing happy hour to you,” says Providence-based founder Dayna Passaretti. “Each infusion kit has a combination of pre-measured fruits, spices, herbs, and sweeteners that have suggested spirit pairings for each flavor,” like rum or bourbon in the vanilla, espresso, and cinnamon Dirty Chai or gin in the floral-forward Sprung mix.

After 10 years of bartending, the pandemic paused her work for a bit, and Passaretti found herself in need of a creative outlet. “I was looking into different ways to create cocktails and bring people an at-home experience,” she says. While a couple of base spirits, citrus fruits, and store-bought mixers are common elements of many a liquor cabinet, flavorful infusions raise the bar, so to speak, to truly bring that elevated nightlife experience home. Passaretti first created the spirit-infusion kits as gifts for friends and family, then officially launched DRANKS almost a year ago. “All it took was one friend to say, ‘hey, I think that’s a great idea – do it!’” she says, “and I’m glad I did.” Passaretti advises following the packaging for suggested spirit pairings if you don’t know where to start, or you can experiment with soaking the mix in a different liquor you have on hand. From there, it’s simple: infuse for two to three days – shaking the jar once a day – then strain. For spicy kits like Tropic Like It’s Hot and Firecracker, taste the second day and continue to infuse for a spicier result. Each jar serves up to eight drinks. A kit can last up to two years, and with alcohol, up to a month.

Ditching the booze? No problem – swap in an alcohol-free base to create mocktails. Passaretti even offers a sugar-free option – Pear Naked – for the health-conscious sipper with just pear, ginger, and lemon, and she strives to use locally sourced ingredients in all varieties. With an environmentally conscious mindset, Passaretti encourages customers to reuse the kit’s mason jar.

As more local retailers are picking up her brand (and a specialty cocktail even appears on the menu at The District in Providence – Spicy Mango, infused by Tropic Like It’s Hot), Passaretti hopes to expand her wholesale business and branch out into events, too. In the meantime, watch for seasonal varieties popping at farmers markets, so you can DRANK up the flavors of summer. DranksByDay.com

FIND DRANKSBYDAY KITS AROUND THE STATE:

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Newport

The District Restaurant & Bar

Providence

Fundati Coffee

Lincoln

Slá Spray Tans

Cranston

Stock Culinary Goods

Providence

Urban Greens Co-op Market

Providence

The Art of Tea

Providence tea houses steep perfection with curated ceremonies, authentic flavors, and cozy ambiance

By An Uong Michelle Cheng curates a personalized experience at Ceremony

The thought of tea often conjures the act of tossing a simple bag of leaves (where from – who knows?) into a mug and steeping in boiling water for a minute or two. Look past the steaming cup and you’ll find a vast world of flavors, agricultural practices, and rituals unique to the meditative quality of brewing and drinking tea. From specialty boba to tea ceremonies, Providence’s brickand-mortar teahouses are asking customers to slow down and enjoy the art of tea.

TEA CULTURE

Having grown up in Anhui, China, which is famous for its green teas, Michelle Cheng of Ceremony was raised around tea culture. From her grandparents, she learned that the best teas are purchased directly from farmers. Before opening the College Hill cafe, she started out selling premium loose leaf teas through Leafy Green Tea, sourcing directly from small farms in China, Taiwan, and Japan. While hosting tea ceremony classes in local cafes on weekends, customers kept approaching her for tips on how to recreate the experience in their own homes. They wanted to know about the teaware, table clothes, and even the music that she played.

“That led me to realize that we were more than a tea company,” Cheng shares. “We were organically developing into a lifestyle brand, which is why we’re called Ceremony, because we sell more than just tea. Our brand and our cafe is a representation of a way of life.”

Towards the end of 2019, Cheng opened Ceremony on Thayer Street, its first location.

From tea cocktails to matcha, Ceremony has something for everyone

widely practiced tea brewing technique in China that comes with many careful steps taken to coax flavor and body from tea leaves. First, the tea is brewed in a Gai Wan, a vessel consisting of a base, a bowl, and a lid. It’s then poured through a strainer into a Gong Dao Bei, a small, clear pitcher used to serve the tea to guests. In total, the tea is brewed six times, which transforms its taste and appearance.

Going on this journey with tea is crucial to understanding the many nuances of any given tea in Ceremony’s selection. Throughout the session, Ceremony’s tea experts adjust water temperatures, steeping times, and amount of teas accordingly as the steeping cycles continue. When sourcing for Ceremony’s roster of teas and market offerings, Cheng says it took three years to find, visit, and familiarize herself with the small family farmers that she works with today. When a customer drove in from out of state to purchase a wood-fired soy sauce imported from Taiwan to gift to her grandmother, Cheng was touched. “She sent pictures of her grandma making braised chicken with it. It reminded me of my grandma,” Cheng says. “Bringing joy and a sense of comfort to others is the fuel that keeps me going.”

RETURN TO THE ROOTS

Tom Chang and Jenny Lu, along with business partner Tony Chen, opened Downtown tea house Charuma in July 2021, offering a menu of singleorigin teas, milk tea options with homemade tapioca pearls, and Taiwanese street snacks. As students in Providence – Chang at Johnson & Wales and Lu at RISD – they tried all the bubble (or boba) tea that the city had to offer. Still, they were left in want of flavors that reminded them of the boba and street foods they would have in Taiwan. “It’s very classic at a Taiwanese night market to hold bubble tea in one hand and a fried chicken cutlet in the other hand,” Lu says.

When they set out to open Charuma, Chang, Chen, and Lu made it a point to carefully source their teas. Chang spent a year in Taiwan researching teas at his friend’s family-owned tea farm. From there, he picked six different teas that can now be found on Charuma’s menu: black tea, jasmine green tea, light oolong tea, smoky oolong tea, pu-erh tea, and formosa beauty tea.

While in Taiwan, Chang learned about the process of tea production, from harvesting tea leaves based on flavor and caffeine level to drying on bamboo trays to roasting for different varieties. Chang made it a point to learn about these nuances. “Ultimately, I want to know what I’m getting and what I’m saying to my customers,” Chang shares.

As for their bubble tea, Charuma only uses real milk (as opposed to dairy powders). “They’re very picky about bubble tea in Taiwan,” Lu says. “There’s a boba place on almost every corner, so it can be very competitive. You have to be really, really good to survive in Taiwan.” For Lu, inhouse bubbles made from tapioca flour imported from Taiwan were non-negotiable from the start. Customers also get to choose their own sugar levels. “I don’t want our customers to just drink something sweet that covers the taste of tea,” Chang shares. “The quality and the taste of the tea is really important to us, along with consistency.”

Together with savory food items like French fries, sweet potato fries, popcorn chicken, and chicken cutlets, Charuma aims to bring customers an authentic Taiwanese bubble tea and street snack experience. “After years of being here, I still couldn’t find a chicken cutlet that reminded me of the Taiwanese one,” Lu laments. That’s why she and Chang import seasonings from Taiwan to use in Charuma’s snack menu. From seaweed salt and pepper to plum, the spices complement the teas in a dance of flavor.

Charuma sources tea from a family-owned farm in Taiwan

LIVE IN THE MOMENT

On the West Side of Providence is Schasteâ, which originally opened in Pawtuxet Village in 2012 and expanded into Providence in 2017. Since the pandemic, the Pawtuxet location has closed, but the Broadway location remains a staple in the city offering a space to slow down with tea and crepes. As one of the first teahouses in the Providence area to challenge customers to sit down and enjoy the ritual of drinking tea, Schasteâ offers unique blends such as Lychee Peach, White Coconut Créme, and White Guava Ginger, among others. They’re also a purveyor of tea-ware and loose-leaf tea by the ounce, empowering customers to take their tea journey home.

Afterall, this journey, for Schasteâ owner Tony Lopez, started at home, where he and his wife made a ritual out of slowing down their days in order to make a cup of tea and enjoy it with candles, music, and a warm ambiance. Whenever they sought out a place like this in Providence, they came up empty. In a world that moves so fast, Lopez wanted a space that would welcome mindfulness. “We’re an escape in the neighborhood, if you will,” he offers. “Everybody’s always thinking about the next moment. We like to remind customers that good things take time. So they have to sit and wait three minutes for their tea to steep.”

In the time that the tea is steeping, Lopez hopes that Schasteâ’s customers are able to unwind a bit and let their minds wander. “We’ve seen customers meet, date, and get married. We’ve seen people start books, finish books, or start businesses,” Lopez says.

At Schasteâ, the mission is to be as approachable and accessible as possible. While the teahouse certainly has its fair share of specialty teas sourced carefully from purveyors around the globe, Lopez is careful not to overcomplicate things for customers. “A lot of times people just get overwhelmed and say ‘give me whatever,’” he says. “So we try to strike a balance by just starting off with giving them enough knowledge to make it interesting.” At the end of the day, it’s about giving guests the chance to take those three minutes to be mindful when the rest of the world may be spinning at hyper speed. Schasteâ serves up tea by the pot to enjoy in their cafe or to go