apple bone tea

AN APPLE AND MARROW FLAVORED BEVERAGE

Apple bone tea is a beverage consumed by many cultures around the land, enjoyed either warm or cold. Different peoples around the continent make their own variation on the tea, but the two main ingredients are the bone of some beast and a local variety of apple, whether sliced, diced, juiced or mashed. The tea was first brewed by the people of the mountaintop village of Monsalvat, who used the bones of the native yangir and the decidedly unappetizing skunkapple. Despite the original’s rather bland (or even outright disgusting) taste, apple bone tea spread around the Crowlands where Drow teamakers added their own spin on the drink. Crowbone tea, as it is often called, is a bitter drink, using the leg bone of a hurgin baer, slices of stoneapple, and ground jasmine petals. Drow traders brought the drink to the port city of Calideon, where baristas crafted their own take on the beverage. Calideon tea is much sweeter and flavorful, combining the bone of an isiore, fig and roseapple juice, and star anise. From there, apple bone tea spread to other ports, whose tea sommeliers made their own strains after local customs and traditions. Tencrescent tea is a brew favored by the gaolers of Bitterill, who spike the tea with ten crescents’ worth of Lesleian whiskey. In the Far Northron kingdom of Ulheim, apple bone tea is prepared with snowapple mash sweetened with cinnamon and a gulo bone. Bayside Blend is a flavor sold in teashops in the resort city of Bayside near Baron’s Cove, using sliced local sunapples and the wing bones of blue tocos. Drinkers have to be wary of accidentally choking on the tiny bones - a fate which befell the young Baroness Clelia on her 17th birthday. Another unfortunate mishap involved the great philosopher Calomagne, who was said to have been poisoned by a few drops of hemlocke oil in his bedside tea. The poisoner was never found, but historians have always believed it to be his student, Maltebrun, who took over his teachings shortly thereafter.

A comparison of three apple bone tea variations from around the world - tencrescent tea from Bitterill in a traditional Tamarkin clay teacup, Calideon tea chilled in a rosemarble taza, and Ulheim tea in an earthenware bowl.

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