Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Black Tea Blend – WS

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow in 1821 and spent his first sixteen years among the orphans, criminals, and asylum patients with whom his father worked. In 1846, Poor Folk gave the young Dostoyevsky his first taste of literary fame, but it is Crime and Punishment and The Idiot that cemented his legacy. His works examined the complicated relationship between ideology, political climate, and personal upbringing and how they each affect a person’s psyche. His novels serve as a precursor to existentialism, and they are pivotal in the Russian Symbolism Movement.

Tea plays an important symbolic role in Dostoyevsky’s writing, where it often serves as a comforting staple in an otherwise chaotic world. In Poor Folk, he writes that “all the world needs tea” and then later the main character reminisces about a simpler time when he could be “sitting in [their] little parlour at tea with [his] parents in the familiar little parlour where everything was snug and warm!” The Russian samovar provides warmth and a central meeting place equivalent to the watercooler. Our Fyodor Dostoyevsky tea blend is an approximation of a typical Russian blend of the time and it recreates the flavors that he and his characters would have savored. Sip along with Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, Rodion Raskolnikov, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky himself with this delicious blend.

This Russian style tea brews to a bright copper cup with a mellow, flavorful, medium-bodied taste and a lemon-citrus aftertaste.

Ingredients: Black teas from India, Sri Lanka, China and Taiwan and bergamot oil.

Brew tea at 212º – steep for 3 minutes

4 Ounces of loose tea makes approximately 50 cups of tea.

Please note that the photo is shown for our 4oz tin. We are also offering this in a 4oz pkg size, which will come in one of our double lined bags labeled with the name of the tea.

A sampling of Dostoyevsky’s works:

     Poor Folk
     The Landlady
     The House of the Dead
     Notes from the Underground
     Crime and Punishment
     The Gambler
     The Idiot
     The Eternal Husband
     The Possessed (Demons)
     The Adolescent
     The Brothers Karamazov

Check with your local bookstore for more titles or for recommendations for further reading.